Chuck Webster

Chuck Webster is known for his playful quasi-abstract paintings and drawings. Lyrical voluminous forms loosely refer to animals, plants, architecture, and human bodies. Webster’s deadpan compositions feature a centered graphic floating nonchalantly against a vibrant, usually monochrome, background. His saturated colors and playful biomorphic forms evoke the spuriously naïve abstractions of Paul Klee and late Matisse, as well as outsider artist Forrest Bess. Although these paintings may seem capricious, they are carefully created and reworked over the course of six to eight months. In recent work, however, Webster has begun to apply the speed and spontaneity of his drawings to the painting process. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the MFA Houston.