Darrell Roberts’s paintings are visual candy. Lush in color to the point of optical intensity, the works churn and vibrate with tension and release. The surfaces are more sculptural than flat picture plane, with surfaces almost vertiginous in their thickly applied strokes and sharply chiseled irregularities.
Abstract in the purest and most classical sense, they maintain a sense of internal regularity that makes them a visual feast for the eyes. In the tradition of sculpture, their ever-present materiality confronts us. Roberts regulates not only the thickness of the paint, but the granularity of the surface itself. With colors that burn with intensity, and forms that practically beg our fingers to stroke their unbridled surfaces, each piece becomes a micro-landscape of almost hallucinogenic perception. If Darrell Roberts work was a drug, it would be an Schedule I psychedelic. Luckily for us, art is still unregulated by the DEA.
Darrell Roberts studio is in the Cornelia Arts Building, and his work is represented through the McCormick Gallery.
Darrell-Roberts.com
ThomasMcCormick.com
CorneliaArtsBuilding.com
From the blog ArtistsOfChicago.blogspot.com