De Gloire is a master of effect. As a goldsmith works with his precious metal, he works with the most high-grade materials and gives shape to them, based on the painter’s knowhow and what he can bring forth. Given his sensibility, his expression is direct and high energy — right between the eyes — but this is expressed by deftly exploiting his pigments while maintaining his respect for them. The immediate impact comes from colors in which De Gloire employs each to its glory. Running the spectrum, rich, saturated hues are laid down or boldly applied on prepared canvases in which geometry, dripping, or action is the form they seek. On the surface, these modalities may not seem consistent, until one recognizes how this is De Gloire taking his paints through their paces. He is attuned to the physical properties and behavior of a specific substance, so that it can be untethered.

Most of them contain visual “force fields,” which, in turn, pull you in. Whether aggregating, weaving, or arrayed in luminous patterns, the painted elements appear to operate by some system of attraction or reciprocal action. Many of De Gloire’s compositions have a centrality or beckoning density that is irresistible. He describes his canvases as an arena, and this component is not simply a surface or a boundary. The paintings in which part of the canvas is left untouched suggest a void. Alternatively when filled to excess, there is an artistic quality called horror vacui or “fear of emptiness; but perhaps in this instance, the principle aligns with its origin in the concept that “nature abhors a vacuum” or Natura abhorret vacuum. Certainly this is most evident in his drip paintings, but there is always the sense that the color may encroach upon, travel through, or overwhelm a limitless void. Splatters extending outward from fevered applications of paint make it seem like De Gloire is mapping a sun. No matter the style or technique, he uses high chroma — a color’s purity and brightness — to create movement and light, as if he were borrowing from the playbook of cosmic phenomena. Who is to say that the stars a dreamer looks to can’t be ones of his own making?

Text © Stephanie Grilli