William Conger

"My new paintings continue to explore formal abstraction that also invites layered, allusive interpretations. Subjectively imagined objects, events and figures are alluded to by the interplay of organic and geometric compositions, atmospheric color, and illusionist shapes. Those allusions, often paradoxical, surprising and fleeting and unwilled — like dreams — occur to me as I paint and they lead my process. They are both personal and public in their mix of the odd and the familiar. 

These abstract paintings are sometimes brooding, as in Swimmer with its suggestion of buoyant shapes carried by a dark current. Sometimes they are playful, as in Yankee Doodle, suggesting — to me — a dandy on horseback. Their allusiveness is ambiguous, that is, multiple, undirected, delinquent, but as paintings they are precise, subsuming the dreaminess of allusion in objective, self-sustained orderly abstraction."

- William Conger, 2020