Josh Dayton: Crossing The Boundaries

The sky was "light grease-colored," as Frank O'Hara once captured it, and it was cool and windy when Josh Dayton opened his door to a visitor last week.

Mr. Dayton, a good-looking man in his early 40s, has a relaxed, casual manner - not what might be expected from an artist whose work bears affinities with the emphatic, swirling style of 1950s Abstract Expressionism. For someone whose paintings are in major collections, he is surprisingly unpretentious, too.

Lunch, stuffed foccacia sandwiches, was on the table, and cats were wandering about.

Two Careers

Marco, a gray kitten who looked particularly well-fed, jumped onto Mr. Dayton's lap as he spoke about his two careers. As a painter who is also a building contractor, he finds a relationship between everyday work and art that most of us miss.

He grew up, with four brothers and sisters, in a family that built houses, and worked at Hardscrabble, the family company, for many years.

"One of my earliest memories of drawing was this huge roll of paper that my mom stretched out across the dining room floor, and we all drew on it. As far back as I can remember, we were always making things. I think I picked up something from that."

"My mom was a big influence."

Role Models

"And from my [maternal] grandfather, [Ray Townsend of Meadow Way, East Hampton], I remember making battleships from scrap wood when I was 8 or 9 years old. We'd spend a whole Saturday there."

The future artist found role models at East Hampton High School. "I was an average student in school. Art classes were what saved me, and certain teachers I had," he said, naming John Lonero, and Barbara Bologna, who now teaches at the Ross School, "and the encouragement I had from Francesco Bologna and Ralph Carpentier."

Mr. Carpentier, who describes his own work as traditional and says he doesn't "think the same way" as Mr. Dayton, is nonetheless a fan.

"He uses color in a way that is very authentic. His color comes out of his spirit. It has a richness that is very much his own."

Deep Feelings

Mr. Dayton does sculpture as well as paintings, drawings, and watercolor; he seems to slide effortlessly among media. In the last 20 years, he has shown in several New York galleries, and he is represented in East Hampton by Arlene Bujese.

His work is engaging in a way that much contemporary art is not - that is, it asks the viewer to respond from deep feelings, and there is nothing "pretty" or fashionable about it. It might be beautiful, but it's also disturbing.

"The key thing in art," he believes, "is emotion. Forget technique."

In the Abstract Expressionist tradition, Mr. Dayton is a painterly painter who nevertheless connects at first glance.

Ossorio Connection

As a teenager, he worked for the artist Alfonso Ossorio on the grounds of his estate, the Creeks, helping to install sculpture. Mr. Ossorio, who was among the first to purchase the work of Jackson Pollock, Jean Dubuffet, and Clyfford Still, was an early supporter.

"There's a guy out here right under our noses who is the real thing!" Mr. Ossorio exclaimed one day to his companion, Ted Dragon.

"He'd worked around the Creeks for years as a kid," Mr. Dragon recalled last week. "But his work suddenly smacked Alfonso. It had been years since he'd been affected by someone that way. It was just the way he felt when he first saw Still, and Dubuffet."

Sand And Stone

"Alfonso felt that he was one of his greatest discoveries, and he was proud of that," said Mr. Dragon. "Here was this kid doing manual labor - moving stones around, and so on - and then he turned out to be so talented."

"One connection they shared was the sense of knowing how to work with natural materials - that connection with sand, with stone. Josh is an artist who communes with the earth, who has a connection with nature."

By then, Mr. Dayton had studied at the New York Studio School and the Philadelphia College of Art, traveled to Hong Kong and Europe, and was working for his father full-time while painting whenever he could. He had landed a dealer, the Bologna-Landi Gallery, which gave him his first one-man show in 1986.

"Drawing In Space"

"Josh's work is vital and alive," said Mr. Dragon, whose extensive collection of contemporary artists includes a number of Daytons. "It's well thought-out, but it also has an element of spontaneity. It's meaningful and powerful work, and I never tire of it. Even his watercolors have the same strength as his other pieces."

In the last couple of years, Mr. Dayton has incorporated ceramic figures into his paintings, wiring them to the canvas so as to extend the image. The art critic Helen A. Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, called this combination of painting and sculpture "a form of drawing in space."

"He amplifies the picture plane and makes it more vibrant," she said. "Ceramic by its nature is very pliant, and that amplifies the voluptuousness of his work."

Media Relations

"In my first year of study at the Philadelphia College of Art, I was still thinking about art as jewelry and ceramics," Mr. Dayton recalled. "I was looking for a career there. But the great collections of art in Philadelphia changed my look at art. I can remember the exact day when I decided to paint."

"Then I went to the New York Studio School to learn painting and drawing. It was extremely intense. Peter Agostini, Reuben Nakian, Sidney Geist - all those guys."

Every Possibility

"And there's an interrelationship between media that they appreciated. I could take Sidney Geist's class on sculpture, but we would paint sculpture - we crossed boundaries."

Michelangelo, one of his two favorite artists, was "driven to express something, something deep and serious, perhaps religious," said Mr. Dayton. "I see the same thing in Picasso," his other hero.

"Picasso wrote, painted, drew, etched, sculpted. He had an intense energy, and it poured out into everything he touched. He was fascinated by every material. And I think that is the ideal way to be - you should be open to all possibilities."

"Those are good heroes," said the artist. "Michelangelo and Picasso. And Larry Bird," he added, laughing.