The Boston Globe
August 6, 2008
Home / News / World
"From Bay State to Beijing"
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"Peter Wayne Lewis...a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, uses his non-teaching time to paint in his Beijing studio and help run a gallery in the 798 Art Zone, known as the Soho of Beijing. He said the "explosive" contemporary art scene here prompted him to... continue or download
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The Sacramento Bee
July 11, 2008
"'Black' - and beautiful: 40 acres exhibit of locally owned art is a revelation'"
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By Victoria Dalkey - Bee Art Correspondent
"Looking at "Black: A Celebration of African American Art in Sacramento-Area Collections," you see strong evidence of the sleuthing skills of Kim Curry-Evans, director of the 40 Acres Gallery in Oak Park...
...the show ranges from edgier works such as internationally renowned artist Robert Colescott's "Life Class," which addresses racial, social and political stereotypes, to pure abstractions by UC Davis professor Mike Henderson and Jamaican-born East Coast artist Peter Wayne Lewis, who grew up in Sacramento. ... continue or download
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The Sacramento Bee
February 8, 2008
Entertainment - Sacticket / Art Galleries
"Just call it 'Pre-modern'"
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By Marcus Crowder
What happens when you combine African cave paintings, theoretical physics and Thelonious Monk?
You get a Peter Wayne Lewis painting.
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The Sacramento Bee
January, 2008
Critic's Pick
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Victoria Dalkey, Bee Art Correspondent
Jamaican-born, internationally exhibited artist Peter Wayne Lewis returns to Sacramento, where he once made his home, for a pair of overlapping exhibitions at JayJay (through Feb. 23) and 40 Acres (Jan. 29 - Mar. 29)..... continue or download
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thrive
July/August, 2007
"In the studio of Peter Wayne Lewis"
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Interview By: Ruth Hardinger and C. Michael Norton
Luminous swathes of color dance on canvases ganged together forming rectangular grids that cover most of the walls of Lewis’s studio. A large table crowds the center of the space, that cover most of the walls of Lewis’s studio. A large table crowds the center of the space, another holds a mountain of worked brushes and squeezed paint tubes suggestive of the gritty materiality. We are engulfed by the presence and scale of the large paintings, partly because we can only stand a few feet back from them. Peter picks up a photo of an aged Caribbean woman in a flower-printed dress.... continue or download
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jamaica Gleaner Arts & Leisure
December 17, 2006
"Star Matter"
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Interview By: Dr. Jonathan Greenland
Peter Wayne Lewis is an artist living and working between Boston and Jamaica. His entry in the exhibition Jamaican Biennial 2006, titled 'Booster 61', is composed of acrylic on paper. Here he discusses his work with Dr. Jonathan Greenland, executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica..... continue or download
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NYArts Magazine
November, 2006
"Graceful Spontaneity in Peter Wayne Lewis’s Painting"
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By: Ding Ning
"My American colleague Professor David Carrier wrote to me that I might find time in my summer vacation to have a look at his friend Peter Wayne Lewis’s one-person show underway in Beijing. ...when I first saw Lewis’s paintings, I was almost instantly intrigued by them. His works looked extremely individual and refreshingly lyrical. Obviously, they deserved a better place to show and a much bigger Chinese audience... continue or download
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New York Times > ART IN REVIEW
May 9, 2003
Peter Wayne Lewis@ Rosenberg + Kaufman, NYC
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By: Roberta Smith
Peter Wayne Lewis paints in a completely familiar hybrid style that might be called Color Field automatism, or Minimalist Lyrical Abstraction. Its saving graces include an impressively unpretentious and sophisticated ease of touch, a taste for clear, sparkling color and a penchant for self-evident structure. His closest ally among contemporary painters would seem to be Mary Heilmann; one can picture Pollock, but also Milton Avery, among his heroes.
Part of the pleasure of these works is their ease of deconstruction. The perpendicular or repeating bands of color and occasional Tanguyesque squiggles with which Mr. Lewis intrudes upon stark white grounds broach no reworking. This means that, with a little looking, one understands how those marks got there: the order of appearance, the breadth of brush used, the occasional mingling of colors on the brush, even the body English of the artist.
When the compositions get more complicated, the clarity of process declines and another kind does not always take over. An exception is "Strings No. 154," a passage of decorative lyricism in which a scaffolding of blue and black lines is punctuated with dots of blue, green, orange and yellow, applied with fat commalike twists of the brush. (Downloadable / Printable version) (Link to NY Times.com)
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NY Arts Magazine
Peter Wayne Lewis "Strings" @ Rosenberg + Kaufman
June 2003
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By: Veerle Poupeye
Should I start this review by mentioning that Peter Wayne Lewis is a Jamaican, who came to the USA many years ago after living in Panama? Doing so may impose a particular set of readings on his work, shaped by common and usually very narrow assumptions about the sort of work Caribbean (or African Diaspora) artists should produce. As an art historian specialized in the Caribbean, I know these assumptions all too well: artists of Caribbean origin are expected to be concerned with culturally specific subject matter and their work must be rooted in postcolonial racial and cultural politics. The only question that matters here, however, is whether such assumptions provide a useful lens to understand Peter Wayne Lewis's new Strings paintings and, clearly, that's not the case. The exhibition press release states that the paintings represent a new step in Peter's ongoing exploration of pictorial space and makes justifiable reference to his 'compositional mastery and superb drawing skills.' Does this formalist emphasis mean that Peter is a 'New York artist,' whatever that may mean today, who just happens to be from Jamaica? Not quite, either. The Strings paintings are deeply subjective works, which are therefore in some way linked to his Jamaicanness and personal history, but trying to explain the paintings exclusively in such terms would be reductive. ... continue or download
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Abstract Art Online
Gallery Views/SoHo April 28, 2003
Peter Wayne Lewis@ Rosenberg + Kaufman, NYC
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By: Joseph Walentini
Peter Wayne Lewis has a spectacular show of new work at Rosenberg + Kaufman that is a major departure from his last show in the same space. The new paintings serve up a brilliant blend of gesture and reductivism in which both conspire to support each other. ...Yet in painting after painting Lewis manages to get it right. ...continue or download In truth Lewis leaves himself exposed in this work - he takes a huge risk in attempting to extract so much out of such few elements. But the artist rises to the challenge and the razor-edge stance is what makes the work and permeates it with meaning.
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Formed in Darkness, Born into the Light
Peter Wayne Lewis talks about his New Paintings, "Fields"
April 2000
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By: David Carrier
Peter Wayne Lewis is a lyrical painterly painter who extends the grand tradition of American Abstract Expressionism. His painting is hot, emotional and personal. Recently New York painting has been a beleaguered art form and most of the prominent young painters are ironical and distanced. Peter is not interested in irony or indirectness. His art, full of feeling, is very immediate. What gives a highly personal twist to his paintings is what he describes as the "language of my body in the generation of these images." These descriptions of Peter may make him sound like an outsider. His sensibility, it is true, is unlike that dominant in painting right now. But as a teacher, and an active participant in the New York art world, he is very much an insider. Son of a jazz musician, he associates the rhythms of his art with music as disparate as that of Beethoven, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington. Widely exhibited and well traveled in Europe, Japan and America, he is a cosmopolitan personality. His highly distinctive art is an amalgam of African, American and European sources. As this interview shows, he reads widely. He knows his art history, and he takes a serious interest in physics. Out of this rich intellectual and visual culture, he creates something essentially his own.
One of the most rewarding tasks for the critic is getting to know a highly articulate first-rate painter. Talking with Peter was very exciting for me and that excitement is communicated in this interview. Our discussion provides a useful perspective on his concerns. But in the end, to understand Peter's achievement you must use our discussion as your starting point. I did that. After we talked, I went back to look again at his paintings. I had learned from him I saw more. Peter is a grandly ambitious artist. His new work is bold, deeply creative and highly original. His painting matters. ... continue or download
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New Art Examiner
"Accumulations: School of Art Gallery, Kent State University, OH"
March April 2002,
Vol 29 No. 4, page 76
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By: Douglas Max Utter
Excerpt: "More painterly but no less off-beat was Peter Wayne Lewis's large work whose nine sections form an over sized window opening onto paint that soakes hotly into paper. Brown squigly passages recall lower intestines, others clearly depict oversized burnt matches. Laura Ownes also pushes hard agains aesthetic hierarchies." ...continue or download
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Review
April 15, 2000
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By: Jeanne Wilkinson
These are two strong exhibitions by abstract painters who create cohesive and compelling visions. Both also have unique personal histories Peter Wayne Lewis, son of a jazz musician, was born in Jamaica and lived in Panama and California before coming east as an adult. ...continue or download
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Art & Antiques
October 1997
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By: George Melrod
Born in Jamaica, and now based in New Jersey, the painter Peter Wayne Lewis creates bold geometries that playfully examine the juxtaposition of colors and the flatness of pictorial space. Centered by rectangles of color, his compositions fuse crisp shapes and energetic textures, giving the works a subtle musical rhythm (Lewis's father was a jazz pianist). ...continue or download
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Abstract Art Online
Gallery Views/SoHo April 4, 2000
Peter Wayne Lewis@ Rosenberg + Kaufman Inc. NYC
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By: Joseph Walentini
These paintings are concerned with the illusionary aspects of visual space. Lewis achieves this in two ways. The first is through an active treatment of forms and color, which, among other things, includes the suggestion of a classical rendering of space. ...continue or download
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