Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ross Bleckner, well-known for his large-scale canvases, has for years used watercolor as both a means and an end to painting. While Bleckner's works in oil deal primarily with remembrance and loss -- operating as memento mori to those lost in crisis -- the watercolors are far more iconic, symbolic of transformation and transcendence. The watercolors, instructive in understanding the larger oil on canvas pictures, also possess a photographic quality -- their brightness and shimmering surfaces attest to this artist's mastery and technique. These precious gems hold up on their own as a major part of Bleckner's oeuvre, yet they are relatively unknown. Beautifully reproduced, the sixty images selected here reveal the depth of Bleckner's talent and the degree to which this work relates to the artist's other paintings.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This attractive book suggests more than it produces. Although Bleckner is not a well-known artist, he has had all the right connections. His teacher, Chuck Close (New York Univ.), encouraged him to go to the California School of Fine Arts in 1972. He was one of the first artists to join Mary Boone Gallery (New York, 1978) along with David Salle and Julian Schnabel, and he had a retrospective in 1995 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His watercolors suggest the style of Georgia O'Keeffe's blowups of close observations of nature without the sensitivity and strength of her work. His work is well executed, with inoffensive, pleasing forms. This book looks like a last-minute job; there is no biography, bibliography, chronology, or listing of works. In an all-too-brief statement, Jose Luis Brea only hints at the meaning or significance of the works. Not for academic libraries. M. Kren; Kansas State University