The Brooklyn Rail

Don Eddy is a master painter whose career has spanned over fifty years. The subject matter of his paintings has consisted of the most mundane materials, yet the completed paintings rivet the most discerning viewer with curiosity. Early in Eddy’s career, his paintings captured the complexity of reflections on highly polished chrome. Later, in the 1970s, he demonstrated how perception can be thrown off by a simple image of a storefront window when seen through two or more pieces of glass. Eddy’s process of organizing a series of images and painting them in a highly defined focus disrupts the understanding of the subject. Pulsating hues disorient our sensibility. Our perception is drawn to question the complexity in the simplest things around us.

In his most recent body of work—the earliest dating from 2020—he continues to employ a process that he has utilized since the late 1960s. He begins with photographs as a source, then makes an intricate drawing of all the image's contours onto a primed canvas. Once complete, he begins the labor-intensive process of setting down an underpainting. He paints the entire image in three colors, using the same sequential order since he began using the airbrush as his primary tool. The three layers are made of tiny circles sprayed one over the other optically, creating a spectrum of colors from the source photograph. The colors consist of phthalocyanine green, burnt sienna, and dioxazine purple. The over-painting includes twenty to thirty more layers, adjusting various parts of his composition to get the overall image correct according to his needs. The results go beyond what the human eye can see or a digital camera can capture. They achieve something only the hand and the cognitive mind can create.

The works in the current show consist of multi-panel and singular-image paintings. The subjects predominantly represent New York City with a focus on the backend of the city, showing the structures and systems that keep the city rolling. The artworks consist of pictures of bridges, trains, the city at dusk and night, the harbor, an amusement park, flowers and more. The complex infrastructure that makes the city possible is displayed in the complex manner in which it functions.

Eddy took the working photographs during the city’s COVID lockdown. Those months of March, April, and May seem so distant that it's hard to imagine a city of eight million could appear so empty. During those early months of the pandemic the days and nights drifted into one another uninterrupted. The painting Morning to Night I (2021) reminds one of that time when weeks felt like hours. The painting consists of the same subject matter stacked on each other. The different characteristic that defines them individualistically is the hue. The painting seems to be precisely about light. The equal representation of the same subject matter at different times of day brings to mind the body of work Monet created using the Rouen Cathedral as the subject to paint light.

In Sea Side Swing (2022), we see two distinct and opposite spaces—a section of a ride in an amusement park and then the view of the roofs of buildings covered with graffiti. We see each subject organized through the use of physics and geometry. In both images, the depth of space seems compressed. The composition archives this and then heightens it using similar value and color. Both the images are democratically organized, initially chaotic, yet controlled. Perhaps at the core of Don Eddy's intentions is not to compare these distinct spaces but to recognize the spaces as what he has observed and his more profound understanding of how we experience the life we live. Don Eddy’s world and truth is seen to the unique perspective of an artist.