Painter Gabriel Boray
by Ric Kasini Kadour
Working in a style most akin to early twentieth-century expressionism, Gabriel Boray makes paintings that are epic in scope. He paints big skies, wide views, and vistas that combine the brush stroke of Per Kirkeby, the compositional quality of Lyonel Feininger, and resident naiveté of Maurice Utrillo. He is a painter of landscapes, even when he is painting still life, trains, boats, or cows.
Aerial II featured on the cover of the March 2008 issue of Art Map Burlington is part of a series of landscapes from the overhead perspective. In a rich yellow palette with undertones of blues and greens, the series explores the landscape from the perspective of the sky. Roads and breaks in the fields become lines; barns and other buildings become hexagons and squares; and together they form an opus palladianum where the tessellation of man’s landscape harmonizes with the organic flow of vegetation and growth. In short, Boray has painted a sky god’s view of us.
With this perspective, Boray also paints from the ground. In Cityscape 41, a ramshackle hodgepodge of buildings creep up a hill. Boray renders the architectural lines and utility poles in blacks and browns. The building’s facades and roofs are a mosaic of colors. The street which runs up the center of the painting is an electric blur of brightness that cuts this dark painting into halves. The street starts at a lake of red and ends at a muddy grey sky. The result is a work that captures the jaunty hum of small city life.
Boray has been working as a painter since 1999. He has shown around Vermont, most notably at the Burlington International Airport and National Life Insurance Company in Montpelier. His work is in a number of private collections in the state and beyond. You can see more of his work at www.gabrielboray.com.
--advertisement--