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About Artist:
Aleah Koury is one of the most innovative artists working in the United States today and manages to consistently surprise and delight with his ability to explore new mediums and subject matter. With his latest series of abstract works: "Organic Geometry", Aleah has cre-ated works in which whimsical and geometric forms, reminiscent at times of Paul Klee or Joan Miro, float across muti-layered backgrounds impregnated with a dazzling variety of materials. Aleah is particularly recognized as a master of the pastel, and these pieces glow with the intense, saturated color characteristic of Aleah's work in pastel..However, in the "Organic Geometry" series Aleah has combined this most delicate of mediums with a variety of other, coarser materials: collaged cardboard and canvas, branding, scoring and tearing, to create works on paper with uniquely textured, robust surfaces. While the "Organic Geometry" pieces with titles like "Spun", "Scattered", and "Playing on the Edge", have the sense of objects, perhaps even figures, moving within an infinite space suggested by translucent veils of pastel color in their backgrounds, Aleah's other new body of abstract work ( "The Way of Things" ) has a different quality. These pieces are also dense with color and texture, but with their minimal compositions and cross-like silhouettes, they appear stark and beautiful in their simplicity. There is no whimsy here, only a distilled purity of color and form that is expressive of a transcendent spirit made physical. The Iris/Giclee process has proved to be the perfect means for translating these extraordinary works into print form, for it is able to capture the finest gradations of tone and color, as well as the varied textures and surfaces of the original pieces. Aleah's Iris/Giclee prints are printed and published exclusively by ArtPress.
History:
Aleah Koury comes from a diverse artistic background, with a Bachelor Degree in Ceramics, and a Master's in Printmaking. This has encouraged him to be bold in experimenting with new materials and imagery. At various times he has incorporated collage, printing, found materials, and a variety of different types of paint media in his work. A gifted colourist, over the past decade Koury has increasingly been drawn to pastel as the purest expression of the colourist's art. By the late 1980's Koury had made a national reputation with a series of abstracted landscapes called "Skyscapes". In these works the gesture of the artist and the full brilliance of colour are revealed in the unclouded intensity of the raw, pastel pigment. More recently, Koury has further stretched the expressive possibilities of pastel by combining it with enamel and latex paints, gold, bronze and silver leafing, oil pastel and pencil to create works of spectacular richness and texture. The abstract "D" series hint at the decorative sensibility of Klimt and Jugendstil while the floating geometric forms recall Klee or Miro. The "Gardens" and "Floral Still Life" series draw inspiration from the 19th century master Odilon Redon as well as Koury's own California garden and particularly the exotic orchids, which he cultivates. In all these works it is the uninhibited sensuality of colour that is the true subject, whether found in the beauty of the natural world or the poetry of the imagination. Aleah Koury was born in Bellingham, Washington, and spent his early childhood in California before moving to the Midwest. In 1975, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia and in 1980 a Master's from the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville. Since that time Koury has lived in California.
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