In the Seattle P-I, Regina Hackett writes about old-school painter Michael Dailey,
“On the West Coast, from Northern California to Seattle, a gestural kind of painterly landscape abstraction took root in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes but not always with figures in it. Prime movers included David Park, Joan Brown, Elmer Bishop, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, Jay DeFeo, Richard Diebenkorn and, in Seattle, William Ivey, Boyer Gonzales, Margaret Tompkins, Robert C. Jones and Michael Dailey. Dailey is one of the youngest and most steadfastly abstract. Once he found his style he didn’t change it until forced by health reasons. In the 1960s, using oil paint, he began to make colors float. His canvases were full of ripe colors only loosely contained within their frames. I always had the feeling if I put a finger under one of his buoyant passages, I could flip it into the air. That was enough for him, and he’d undoubtedly be doing it still had oil paint not become more than his balance and lungs could bear. Dailey has lived with multiple sclerosis since his 30s. While he loved the depth and illusion of oxygen he got from oil, he was ready to make the change when change was inevitable.”
“Acrylics took away his bounce, but what developed as a replacement has become as intriguing. Dailey paints flat smears of color that drag themselves across space and fight with their frames, which are constantly realigning their positions. Seattle art museums being what they are, none has seen fit to provide one of the Northwest’s most singular colorists a retrospective, which is why the Greg Kucera Gallery joined forces with Dailey’s gallery, Francine Seders, to provide one. At Kucera are early works, from 1965 to 1999. At Seders, the paintings are of more recent vintage.”
“Michael Dailey: Color, Light, Time, and Place: Selected Works, 1966 – 1999,” Greg Kucera Gallery, in conjunction with Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA. Through February 14.
Michael Dailey: Color, Light, Time, and Place: Selected Works, 2000-2008,” Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle, WA. Through February 9.
