Alteronce Gumby: The Color of Everything

Gumby's process is the fulcrum of his work. It begins with the examination of light, its properties, and media, including resin, glass and gemstones. The result is what Gumby calls his, "tonal paintings", made of unorthodox materials, which produce different hues, values and energies. His awareness of these ocular and kinetic possibilities derives from intensive research and observation. Gumby's paintings are constituted to expand the understanding of abstraction, life and the origins of the universe.
 

Reflection is a property of light, but it is also a method of examining one's environment and self. Illusion is relative to reflection and reflecting light, while illusion is ostensibly linked to faith. These prospects factor equally into Gumby's painterly outcomes. Slick, reflective, resin surfaces act as both scientific and spiritual advisors. Shards of glass, meticulously pieced together like a puzzle, refract light. Each painting, composed of countless tiny prisms, slow and bend light as it travels from the density of air to glass. The light disperses into color and creates astonishing optical phenomena. Gemstones populating his works are evidence that heat, pressure, hot fluids and gases once consolidated in the earth's core. The visual opulence created by these elements are not only a testament to the ways in which color manifests, but the visible and invisible forces at work in our world and beyond.

Lessons from Monet's Water Lilies and NASA's James Webb telescope also commingle meaningfully in Gumby's new work. Monet's palette and keen observational aptitude make his Water Lilies, "paintings not only of the landscape of the pond, but the reflections within, including cloud and sky." Cosmic topography and the widescreen vista of nature attest to the effects of celestial mechanics upon terrestrial events. Inversely, the James Webb telescope's first image, released in July 2022, uses infrared radiation to study the birth and death of stars, the formation of planets and galaxies when they collide.

For Gumby, the fascination is the spiritual pursuit of the artist in nature and the magnitude of possibilities that can be found within the unknown.