Quotes
”A walk through these spaces, seeing the sky about you, you pause - then I have succeeded.”
- Jan Peter Stern
"One comes to the sad conclusion that sculpture made by one or two or even five men just can not compete with the collective magnificence of airports and international classical architecture maybe toy-like irony is the only path for the individual artist.
"This depressing feeling suddenly disappears when one encounters the sculpture of Jan Peter Stern, three curving slabs of metal that culminate in a 30 foot tower. It is really there, its orange and black planes undwarfed by the surroundings."
- William Wilson in "Los Angeles Times" reviewing "Art in the City" group at Century City
"I usually avoid forcing my materials beyond the elastic limits which in the case of spring steel are very high. This may be an avoidance of violence. Yet, to form a sculpture I may use all my forces, or those of machines of my devising, to set against one another the forces pent up within the sculpture.
"It may be akin to tuning of a stringed instrument. Music was my first goddess. Through my sculptures I come as close as I may ever be able to composing music.
"Sculpture, more so than the graphic art forms, may be a closer mate to musical composition in that it must also be experienced sequentially; one walks about it, feels the vibrations of the wind, observes the changes produced by shifting sun and clouds."
- Jan Peter Stern
"I like to go out on a limb when I paint. Every time I take a risk something more interesting happens.
"I like the discipline, I like to be limited by few colors. It dictates the image, it tells me not to go too wild.
"Before I start painting I’m rather anxious.Each time I risk spoiling the vast canvas, but the unexpected often results in a more satisfying, even exhilarating outcome.
"I like to be surprised. All I know are the colors I start with. Everything else evolves from that."
- Irene Monat Stern
"I like the hardness of stainless steel; to wrest huge sheets into shape. The form takes on its character all at once! The luminous liquid quality of stainless gives it a life of its own.
"The lyric Wind Shapes I envision to be poised in balance - stirred by the winds that course over the land, yet resistant to storms and man. Their sinuous and elusive surfaces shift in emphasis through the movement of the observer and obtain coloring by variation in natural lighting.”
- Jan Peter Stern
"My first expression was through photography, long before college, in which I mainly studied forms of nature and trees in particular.”
- Jan Peter Stern
"Someone commented to me that the paintings feel like gauze that’s been cast into the wind. Another person said that my work makes her think of Georgia O’Keefe had she gone further."
- Irene Monat Stern
"Irene devised her very own vocabulary of visual expression and her own ways of physically achieving these results in an amazingly spontaneous, yet controlled way.”
- Jan Peter Stern
"Looking at Irene Monat Stern‘s paintings, you can almost touch the folds of color, as if the eye can transmute them to the fingertips. What you feel are layers of gossamer and of diaphanous material. Stern’s forms also elude your grasp because they appear to emerge from behind the picture plan, stained as they are in unsized canvas and absorbed into it so that the canvas texture is visible seemingly above the paint surface.
"Stern has developed these large paintings, at the source gallery, out of her work with watercolors as well as collages and monoprints. At some point in this evolution Morris Louis seems to have been an influence. The statements both artist make about the nature of paint differ. Stern makes acrylic seem weightless. It floats on white pristine canvas. It masses into rich areas with special depth that Louis’ works lack. It is forced into the surface in many directions by an energy source beyond the paintings edges.
"Stern is most effective with this technique. The outcome is light, airy and sensuous. In works like Harvest, Latitude and Convergence, an energy center beyond the painting’s edges seems to propel the pigment pigments onto the canvas in broad forceful gestures. Stern’s works have an image-edge, flatness-depth tension conveyed by a technique that is so sensuously and adeptly handled.“
- Judith L. Dunham, “Irene Stern Paintings,” Artweek. 31 May 1975
"Stern's sculptures have a distinct presence. They belong to the scale of today's American cities. The objects push up and out, seeking the freedom of atmosphere or great landscapes for true visual and aesthetic assessment."
- Betje Howell in Santa Monica "Evening Outlook"
"Stern works principally in sheet stainless and steel, materials he handles expertly, with power and grace The forms are quite abstract. This sculpture lifts the hearts of visitors."
- Arthur Millier In LA "Herald Examiner"
"He infuses the mathematical with graceful life; the forms seem
to exfoliate beneath his touch. His craftsmanship is unquestionable."
- Vivien Raynor in "Art News"
"Lyrical abstract painter Irene Monat Stern rivals Helen Frankenthaler in her mastery of stain painting. Stern’s radiant color fields come alive with a variety of natural references - the movement of sunlight through mist, flowing water, or a blossoming flower. "
-Hollis Taggart Gallery
". . . paintings by Irene Monat Stern, whose liquid flows of color coalesce into luminous and elegant compositions. Slow, powerful visual rhythms imbue Stern’s rich forms with the weighty feel of geologic time, like the movement of glaciers in exotic hues. Her pure abstract paintings call to mind the stained canvases of the Color Field artists, but her work embodies a unique elegance that differentiates it from that of her contemporaries. Stern’s colors grow and blossom organically across her large canvases, and these chromatic blooms manage to be simultaneously serene and dramatic as they radiate vibrant, earthy tones."
-Hollis Taggart Gallery