© Paul Verdell, image by Kai Newby; courtesy of Library Street Collective & the artist
Paul Verdell is an American contemporary artist whose drawing and painting focused practice revolves around an in-depth exploration of gestural mark-making and color. His works demonstrate a play with his chosen materials which include oil paints, oil pastels and crayons. At the heart of every work, Verdell is influenced by both a personal narrative—his Black American heritage—as well as the study and experimentation of color and material in relation to a constant reworking of each piece.
Through his practice, Paul Verdell seeks to find a purity in colors and demonstrates a relentless search for luminosity within his works as they find form through a time-based process. With time his works have become less and less concerned with representation, but rather more focused on an intuitive skill to create environments and atmospheres that may refer to certain internalised landscapes. From small-scale to large, Paul Verdell’s abstract works offer viewers a sense of place and emotion through his, at times loose and at times erratic, gestural marks.
Paul Verdell (b. 1991 in Long Beach, CA) is an American contemporary artist. He received a BFA from Bowling Green State University (2018). He has had residencies at Black Rock, Dakar Senegal (2022); Macedonia Institute, Chatham, New York, USA (2019; and Chautauqua School of Art Summer Artist Residency, Chautauqua, New York, USA (2017). Verdell has has solo exhibitions at Library Street Collective, Detroit, USA (2022 & 2021); Louis Buhl & Co., Detroit, USA (2021); GIFC Galleria Golf, Oslo, NO (2020); and o-oLA, Los Angeles, USA (2017). He has participated in group shows at Quappiprojects, Louisville, USA and False Cast Gallery San Diego, USA (2021); HVW8 Gallery, Berlin, DE (2018); Golsa, Oslo, NO (2018); and Soulland Copenhagen, DK (2017), among others. He lives and works in Detroit, Michigan and is represented by Library Street Collective.