CulturePeel has teamed up with the beautiful Back Bay Italian furniture showroom Il Decor to demonstrate how art can pair with design to bring spaces to life. Our “Spring Awakening” show of John Blee’s abstract expressionist paintings is now up at 10 St. James Street.

John Blee’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum, and we’re thrilled to bring them to Boston as an antidote to a long winter season. Having lived with John Blee’s work for the past 15 years, we can can only say that they are transformative and bright light and thoughtfulness to every day. Always changing yet constant in their uplifting, life-affirming effect, they become close friends. You can read more about John in a previous CulturePeel post here.

On Tuesday, April 10, Il Decor is hosting a special evening on “The Art of Entertaining” – and all are welcome to attend (please RSVP here).

Below is a glimpse of “Spring Awakening,” which will be up through April. Hope to see you there!

For information about the artwork, please email apartan @ gmail . com

About John Blee:

Dynamic, sensual, and above all joyous, John Blee’s vibrant works engage the eyes and the senses with playful, energetic tension.

Living in India and Pakistan for half of his childhood had a formidable influence on Blee’s art. The spiritual nature of the art of the subcontinent echoes early modernism, Kandinsky, and the roots of abstract art. Blee was fortunate to meet Rauschenberg as well as John Cage in Delhi when he was fifteen. Arriving in New York at twenty, he met Clement Greenberg, Robert Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler, who would become friend and mentor in an exchange of studio visits.

Blee’s earlier work was more related to landscape – a kind of “inscape” – and later developed into abstracted, ever-evolving interpretations of still-life. Bonnard, seen to great advantage in the public collections of Washington DC, where Blee currently resides and paints, has an important influence on the artist’s work.

Blee’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern art in New York and the LA County Museum of Art.