WORK BY YURI PADAL
By Hunteress Thompson
September 25 2008 – October 8 2008 Issue 198
Yuri Padal’s large abstract impressionist works are just that: a retinal feast.
Yuri Padal has an impressive body of work hanging. The place was packed. All evening, critics, collectors, artists and just plain folk craving their daily dose of color wandered in and out of the storefront gallery.
composition #137. This is 40 inches by 60 inches of lovely colored triangles, applied spatula style. The thick paint unfolds in hues of pink, yellow, peach, saffron, orange, rose, maroon, cinnamon, charcoal black, and wine. The whole composition is lifted upwards by a discreet application of white. I
Amsterdam, an oil-on-canvas piece sold at once (well done!). It hangs vertically at 24 inches by 36 inches,. Teeming with colorful brushstrokes that pull the eye upwards, you can get your daily dose of maroon, yellow, hints of bronze and apple green. If it was me, I’d hang it up in my kitchen so that I could get my daily retinal feast first thing in the morning. Another eye-popper is Atlantic Ocean–two square feet of awesomeness. I noticed this one at once because it sports such a thick application of glossy resin atop the impasto color brushtrokes that they look like pieces of multicolored glass imbedded in the canvas. They have a clear quality to them, and forest green, canary yellow, vermillion, and tangerine hit a sea of multicolored flowing and marbled brushstrokes: unmistakably, the water of the Atlantic Ocean.
What works exceedingly well in Padal Works are the oversized larger-than-life Universe, at seventy-one inches by sixty-two inches, which I intend to buy when I become very wealthy, and Red October #17 (63″ by 67″), which has my daughter written all over it. These two pieces have their own private digs within the Art Garden’s walls and it serves them well.
We are seduced, enticed into viewing Universe, a monumental work in blues, aquamarine, charcoal, sleet, black, ultramarine, amethyst, and too many other colors to enumerate them all. The overriding palette is blue. Very blue. The entire visual panorama is flecked with silver and gold leaf and drips with resinous gloss, applied irreverently and casually so that it leads one to think that the whole universe is coated in cosmic tears.
The celestial beings weep, covering our universe. The blues ain’t called the blues for nothing and even cowgirls get the blues.
Einstein explained, along with his theory of relativity, and his (albeit unintentionally) horrendous contribution to the possible annihilation of our beautiful, fragile planet via the splitting of atomic particles and nuclear fission, that every action has an opposite reaction. It is the ebb and flow of things, events, and circumstances. The yin and yang of energies, the cosmic dance. In this framework, Red October #17 is the vibrant, warm, positive antidote in Padal Works. (And Padal works. Hard. It shows.)