The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is proud to announce the opening of Cued By Color… Paintings and Mixed Media Work By Michael DesRosiers, on view at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum from November 14, 2015 through January 31, 2016.

Cued By Color inaugurates Near :: New, an ongoing program designed to feature Contemporary art at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. "Just as it is important to preserve and present the art of the past, showing the work of our time – by the artists among us – is a fundamental responsibility of a museum, and it is a role we relish, " said Sam Quigley, the Director of the Lyman Allyn. "Our region is fortunate to count among our neighbors many fine artists producing excellent work. It is a great pleasure to feature some of this treasure in the Glassenberg Gallery, here in the Lyman Allyn Art Museum."

Drawn from the artist’s studio, Cued By Color, this color-rich exhibition celebrates the distinctive nature of his process-based aesthetic. Decades of material familiarity paired with innovative techniques are used by DesRosiers to probe the boundaries of the binary age, presenting a fresh take on the abstract idiom. Originating in color and executed over time, each work bespeaks the artist’s personal philosophy. Regarding his work DesRosiers states, "At least for me, a painting is a recorded performance brimming with pentimenti of accumulated dialogue spoken in pigment".

For the next two and a half months, the Lyman Allyn is proud to show the work of Michael DesRosiers, a resident of Lyme, Connecticut. Over 20 richly colored paintings and mixed media works will be on view in the newly re-painted Glassenberg Gallery, presenting a fresh look at abstract painting and mixed media. The large paintings, (48 x 48 x 5 ½ inches) are of polymer paint on cradled MDF panel (medium-density fiberboard). The substrates are prepped with a material that is almost pure white and applied layer by thin layer to yield an extremely smooth and absorbent surface. Upon completion of this careful preparation, DesRosiers begins his creative process, a dialogue spoken in pigment, layering colors and textures to create a complexity of pattern, rhythm and chromatic alignments.

"My thoughts as a painter reside in the non-objective idiom commonly referred to as abstraction," said DesRosiers. "It is an artful address where my sensibility lives without the shelter of a traditional narrative or scaffold to support the act of painting. The source of my inspiration is not always apparent. I cannot find my painterly place of registration in terms of subject in the table still life, the terrestrial landscape defined by the eternal horizon line, or in the provocative face or figure of a human subject. Rather I work to create a highly personal art that doesn’t aspire to reproduce what is seen directly in nature, but enacting instead a complexity of pattern and chromatic alignments, that at least for me, speak to a deep more resilient truth of material reality."

The combination of brilliant color and powerful energy will engage and immerse viewers in DesRosiers duet between his experience both in life and in the working methodologies of painting and the material properties of his work. An illustrated catalogue including a Director’s essay will accompany the exhibition.