Blaise DeLong

Blaise DeLong's work seems to me both thoughtful and intuitively sensuous. Her paintings have a sense of inevitability as if they had grown spontaneously from a long meditation. There is something iconic about them, in the way that icons extend beyond their physical beauty and call us into contemplation. - Kate Regan

"My paintings are worlds unto themselves, the results of an intuitive process involving colour, layering, decision and time. I start with colour or the idea of a combination of some colours that appeals to me at that moment, put them down and then the fun begins. The balancing of forms using colour and weight that I strive to make clear to myself and bring into being may well be archetypal or a personal ordering in my mind. Some paintings reveal themselves quickly, most involve a longer exploration. I like to build up surfaces. I like to make a painting where something has happened even though much of the action is buried beneath the surface. I like to reduce a painting to its essentials and I like to make that extra mark that starts the process all over again. Although my paintings are about themselves and record the process of their making, references to my surroundings do manage to slip into the work. Frenetic grids appeared during time spent in the city while abstracted signs of beach towns and harbours and horizons are prevalent in my newest work done on the east coast." - Blaise DeLong 2006

L'Atalante - 2005
acrylic on canvas, 44 in x 52 in