Abbott Stillman

The book is the first publication of the contemporary American artist’s paintings. It represents a compendium of the multiple modes of painting the artist utilises, following the numerous paths and approaches he has utilised over the course of the many years of his studio practice – always with his very recognizable voice and distinct style. The works depicted in this catalogue are concentrated in the 21st century, though Stillman has been painting privately since the 1980’s. This represents the first publication of any of his paintings, which he did not even agree to show publicly until 2023. His paintings are compositions of rich color, often in abstracted grounds and spaces that evoke deep emotional responses. Stillman’s love for painting is pure and abiding: it is driven by a compulsion to create, deep gratitude for the human experience, his desire to offer joy as a counter to suffering, and his reveling in the medium that has a long history of seeking to repair a fractured world. But sometimes motives and causes are just very simple. Stillman himself says it best: “In the end, the essence of my process is that I let the paint and the canvas tell me what to paint. When I’m doing my best work, it feels like it’s coming through me, instead of from me.”