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Analysis Of Steve Smulka Paints Glass

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Steve Smulka paints glass—but it might be more accurate to say that Smulka paints light. Smulka uses mason jars, vintage seltzer bottles, wine decanters, vases and water pitchers to capture the way light bends, refracts, illuminates, and distorts its surroundings. In some of the paintings, backgrounds of looming clouds and ridged tree bark are as in-focus as the glass containers in the foreground, merging the two in a poetic, scrupulously accurate, yet slightly unreal manner. In other paintings, bottles in columns two, three, or four deep create multiple layers of transparency that make for almost abstract studies of light and color. In Steve Smulka’s closely observed, meditative paintings, these densely luminous layers give weight to the

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