LewAllen Galleries will present a survey of works, entitled “The Painted City” by noted realist painter Seth Tane. This exhibition will include extraordinary urban scenes inspired by Tane’s intimate links to New York City, San Francisco, and aspects of other environments that Tane has personally experienced over a career of more than fifty years.
Tane is an experience-based realist painter who shares his observations of the world in his art relating it in with exquisite technical proficiency in the most exquisite of detail. About his vision and artistic background Tane states:
My origins are in NYC, but I was bound for the west coast as soon as I could get there...making paintings of industrial and urban scenes while enjoying a wild ride of a life on land and at sea. My hands-on experiences in a world I find visually fascinating drives my desire to create detailed paintings of ships, trains, bridges and industry. My gradual return to residency in NYC has renewed a fascination with the global mix of people that surround me as I live in and travel throughout the city. The crowds and faces, the clothes and things transported, that 24/7 intensity in contrast with the views I find at the deserted margins, all make for endless inspiration.
In these works, Tane shares with the viewer personal explorations of places he has lived, painting scenes of busy subway stations, bustling city sidewalks, as well as shipyards, and railroads, evoking sensations akin to peering through a dreamlike aura or recalling a vivid memory. Other of Tane’s paintings offer a blend of his meticulously detailed realism with an occasional touch of the surreal, as he places unlikely subway station entrances, into desert landscapes, or a mossy, rock-lined creek over the tracks of a subway train seen in “Miller Creek Local”.
Tane counts as his influences the work of artists Edward Hopper, George Bellows, and the early 20th century Ashcan School painters. Tane’s “Canal & Lafayette” is reminiscent of Bellow’s staccato rhythms of color found in his paintings of New York City. While his subject matter is varied, Tane is especially drawn to painting urban scenes.
The hustle, the incredible diversity of people. The captivating street scenes and subway life provide me with endless ideas and subject matter.
(Seth Tane)
Seth Tane studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited his work in over 50 group and solo exhibitions, including the Louis K. Meisel and Bernaducci-Meisel Galleries in New York, and the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. Tane’s work was acknowledged in 2020 with his award of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Born in New York City in 1953, Seth Tane currently works in New York City on a self-elevating vessel used in offshore mineral exploration, known as a liftboat, which he uses as a residence and studio on the Hudson River.