Alex Weinstein's current paintings are based on the evening light and its movement across the Pacific Ocean. These works comply with his reductive style of painting, where most, if not all, decipherable content has been removed from the canvas. Within this series of intersecting sea and sky paintings, there are no clouds, no birds or planes to disrupt the view. What remains is a subtle shift in color where one hue fades into another, just as the light from the setting sun wanes on the horizon as the day draws to a close.
Formally, some of the paintings are construed as a type of false monochrome, since at first glance they appear to be one solid color. Yet, upon closer inspection the chromatic shifts in the work become visible and the sense of light and atmosphere disrupts a monochromatic reading of the work.
In addition to the solitary canvases, Weinstein revisits the vertical diptych composition of the paintings in which he obscures the line between representation and abstraction. Singularly, each panel is an abstract color field painting; however, when placed together as a diptych, the ocean and sky imagery crystallize, grounding the work in the realm of realism.
Ultimately, and in keeping with his artistic output, the imagery in Westward Paintings is informed by Weinstein's time spent in the ocean as an avid surfer. He states that his paintings speak to the immersive state of being in and around the ocean. In this body of work he invokes the visual cues of gazing across the horizon, the texture of the ocean waves as one ascends up to the surface and the interplay between the light and the water. Although Weinstein's work is thought to be very subtle and subdued in color and sparse in visual content, the paintings imply a rich atmospheric space with a temperature and climate all their own. In his own words Weinstein suggests, "This work seeks to present visual space as a resting place, or vista for the viewers' interpretive associations to collect inside."
Alex Weinstein's work is held in esteemed private and public collections worldwide and is in the permanent collection of the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California. Weinstein currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California.