Heaven and Earth

This is awesome! Great documentation as well.

Characteristic of the artist's unique and daring oeuvre, Chuck Stableford’s Heaven and Earth pushes the boundaries of medium and form. As Stableford notes, the influence of Frank Stella’s later work can be discerned. However, I cannot say that I would have noticed a relation to Stella without reading his description (I refrain from commenting on Stableford’s opinion about the mediocracy of Stella's 1980s and onwards shift towards metallic chaos, but I'm glad Stableford only alludes to it). I hesitate to even prescribe outside influence to Heaven and Earth because the work is so original and not in the least derivative. Still, it would be a disservice to Art History to  leave Mark Rothko unmentioned after bringing up Stella. The richly painted, tonally engaging, complexly simple, two-toned (for lack of a better term, as Heaven and Earth contains many variations of tones) composition does not channel Rothko but echoes the spirit of his work.  

Like the Abstract Expression master, Rothko (in my opinion only rivaled my Joan Mitchell), Stableford focuses on the interaction of a limited collection of colors. Were it not for Stableford’s brilliant and excitingly original preoccupation with form through unexpected mixing of materials, I would argue that his primary focus was colors and their relationships with each other. However, his dedication to experimenting with unconventional pairings of media is more pronounced than their tonal equivalents. Were Heaven and Earth simply acrylic or oil on canvas, it would be a very nice picture but too derivative of Rothko. However, Stableford completely sets himself apart from Rothko (or any artist for that matter) by exploring unconventional combinations of materials. He pushes the boundaries of painting so far that one could easily argue Heaven and Earth is a sculpture.