Cause for Celebration

Paint fractures and spills outward from a white, textured center, blue, coral, green, and gold caught mid-air like confetti. Robert Standish spent the first half of his career as a photorealist, precise to the brushstroke, and walked away from it over a decade ago for this. The layering is deliberate: he studied psychology at Antioch, and he builds the surface so the eye keeps finding new ground in it, and so what you see says as much about you as about him. The title isn’t ironic. It is the painting’s mood exactly.

Standish’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, Stanford University, and JPMorgan Chase.

Media & Materials:

• Acrylic on canvas | 30 in diameter | 76.2 cm | Circular canvas, unframed
• Original, signed by the artist