Homage to Kenneth Noland #1 12″X46″ acrylic on canvas
I have been an admirer of Kenneth Noland’s Targets for a very long time and decided to do a piece extending one of his targets horizontally over three panels.I painted these using a textured cell structure and underlying geometry to give continuity to the composition.
Detail
ISADORE MICHAS 
Like Noland, but superficially. I’d make the same kind of superficial comparison to Stella.
Neither of these artists’ ideas are explored in these paintings. (In fairness, you’ve only invoked Noland.) You’ve simply incorporated similar imagery.
Noland’s circle paintings were theoretically based on the shape of the canvas, particularly the center. He never would have (and never did) move his circles from the center of the canvas.
Your handling of the paint is also quite different from Noland’s thin washes, which soaked into and stained the canvas.
On a purely aesthetic level, I would be more likely to compare this work to Frank Stella. Though Stella, too, was very concerned with the shape of the canvas, which determined the shapes within the composition.
I’m not making these points to make you feel like a dick. I’m honestly trying to help. It is dialogues like this that help artists grow. If you’re really interested in Noland, I suggest you read Michael Fried’s catalog essay for “Three American Painters.”
Here is somebody that has grounded himself in another’s theoretical knowledge in order to inflict himself on someone.The title was Homage to Kenneth Noland not the distilled essence of Kenneth Noland as replicated by Isadore Michas. I find a handful of Kenneth Noland’s Targets very haunting and powerful in their usage of colour and my aim was to replicate what I had admired most about them being the colour swatch and it’s relationship within the circumscribed circle of the target that it came from.My goal was to expand the composition horizontally over three panels shifting the energy horizontally over a larger area.The approach was almost like a caricature done with whimsy and lightness nothing more given at the time I had felt that there really wasn’t that much more worth exploring on. The lessons that can be learnt from looking at Kenneth Nolland’s work are powerful but at the same time very limited (it’s a very small repertoire without much evolution).Artists grow more from painting then dialogue and all explorations whether “superficial”or of catharsis are valid if the work was so meaningless maybe you should have spared the gymnastics for someone more worthy.
regards
Isa
Hi Isi,
I have just invited you to my facebook… finally, and never mind that, to this work.
You know I am a fan, so thought I would just drop a comment on this recent work. Unfamiliar with the work of Nolan and Stella, I viewed a few pics from a google image search on their names. Let me preface this by saying, I really don’t think jmo gets your work at all, or what you are trying to achieve here. I think your work is far more evolved than Stella – from what I have seen, while at the same time I am intrigued by the attraction to Nolan, who from only a brief view I really like, kind of like Rothko but drawn in smaller, more circular and ochre spaces. Either way, I think you have managed to ‘trap’ for want of a better word, Nolan in this work, without surrendering your style or sensibilities to his. And, I feel, therein lies the problem. It just feels as though you have imported a sensibility of color, without really emotionally reaching out to the work of Nolan. There is a blockage here, and I cannot really say what it is, as though there are a number of steps to be taken in the direction of Nolan, that have somehow been restrained and not achieved. You have basically kneaded him into a shape to please you, rather than seek a harmonious whole.
Perhaps this is a step you need to take, or might experiment with, stylistically as an artist.
What I wrote previously was
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I hope my rambling makes sense to you. Good luck and I hope to be in touch in the next couple of months to discuss another project,
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What I write now is;
There is a next step you need to take as an artist, an opening out of your style. I know you probably think everybody is a critic, but I have no sense of evolution you recently,
all my very best regards, and what the hell do I know anyway,
Ian