Reeve Schley is known for his light-colored paintings of people at leisure, made in plein air in Central Park, rural New Jersey, or public beaches. Focused on evoking a holistic sense of a place or experience, Schley depicts select elements using sketchy outlines and gestural passages of color, leaving the viewer to fill in the details on blank faces or empty patches of canvas. “Once I’ve indicated what interested me—the weather, the people, the vegetation, the ocean—there’s no need to stuff the painting with more information,” he says. His works recall both an impressionistic sensibility and the simplified forms and colors of Milton Avery.
Three Blues-Tidal, 2000, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches