Reviews
"Congratulations on your successes with your gallery in P’town and on your continued growth as an artist! Your works have always displayed your remarkable talents in technique, in composition, in your use of color, in subjects, and in storytelling. It is thrilling to see the artist (and perhaps personal) evolution, from an artist based on the west coast to an artist based in a historic artists colony in New England. There is a strong undercurrent in your newer work that you are facing new creative challenges and meeting them confidently and directly and pushing yourself as an artist, giving yourself a bit of breathing room to experiment and try and do. All of your work is captivating and beautiful! Bravo!"
"In this structured environment is a very masculine presence that interrupts a stately reserved setting."
""Two Blue Doors"...another captivating image. It demands that you stop and consider the composition...so very good and unique."
"Speer's art has an element of air."
"It gives me wanderlust to come see Speer's gallery after seeing posted pics. It's almost like art-ception how Speer has turned a gallery into art-worthy photos."
"Incredibly beautiful and fascinating. Over time, and with each viewing, this work and this brilliant series lose none of this power."
"[I] was moved to wend through Curtis Speer's Imgrum site. The body of work portrayed there compels: subject matter ranging from still life composed with an eye to provocative, unexpected juxtapositions, rendered in solemnly harmonious terms through Speer's contemplative self portraits tapping both an essential unrepentant masculinity and a kind of humility keyed, perhaps, to stepping into and engaging with the uncontrollable and the unknown. [...] We're profoundly pleased Speer [is] joining the arts scene and eclectic community on the Northern Cape. [I'm] looking forward to seeing the work his presence in Provincetown inspires."
"This photomontage of self-portraits is wonderful. Curtis Speer's self-portraits are incredible, fascinating works of art. Speer is a gifted artist. When he turns the camera on himself, the results are dramatic, stunning, revealing, concealing, insightful, powerful and absolutely gorgeous."
"I never grow tired of Speer's self-portraits. They are beautiful images [that] are endlessly fascinating. [Study] the image for the things he is deliberately showing the viewer, the things he seeks to withhold from the viewer, and the things he reveals inadvertently (both what is there and what is not there)."
"In his body of work, Curtis Speer sees and captures beauty in many forms from an impressive array of subjects. For example, several recent images of parts on a school playground are evocative, advocating and speaking to a world that once was, [...] and communicate a personal beauty through melancholy. Speer's works [...] are telling in that they reveal something about the artist as a man."
"Curtis Speer presents literally and metaphorically that which is deeply personal and universal. He does this stunningly, evocatively, with [technical] adroitness by exposing parts of himself in a beautiful image."
"The work is stupendous, intriguing, and tantalizing. All of Speer's pictures are astonishing and fascinating."
"Speer deftly demonstrates his technical skills with the camera by capturing absolute black and absolute white within the frame. He could have done this easily enough in a black and white photograph of a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers. Instead, he not only puts himself physically into the shot, he frames the shot. He gives the space depth and context to control the viewer's eye as it moves around the frame. The artist himself creates the context and meaning of an otherwise empty space."
"Curtis Speer is a gifted artist. I am besotted by his work. His work displays keen skill and reveal much about the art, the act of creation, the artist and his constructed and revealed self. The image The Artist & The Art is intriguingly self-conscious. Speer tells the viewer that this work is [both] Speer as the Artist and the Art itself. This is deceptively simple; Speer is both and does both[. He] implies that art is a natural dichotomy, that [both] he and the viewer are able to neatly place Curtis Speer as Doer in one box, and Curtis Speer as Passive Object in another, however, there are no neat lines or divisions. He is always, simultaneously, the artist and the art."
"In this moment, when I feel like we might drown in the deluge of vitriol and caustic rhetoric and physical violence [of our current world], I am ever more grateful and appreciative of Speer and his work. He sees, captures and shares beauty, which is a glorious gift at all times, and which is particularly splendid when our souls need the salve of [such] beauty."
"The power and tension in the parallel and perpendicular play of his horizontal and vertical lines (a postmodern nod to the influence of the modernist works of Mondrian) are dynamic. The large scales are very appropriate, even necessary, so that the full power and full beauty of the images are allowed the space they need."
"Perfection [is] a half-peach in a nest. Speer's capacity to juxtapose fascinating incongruities continues to fascinate me, very often stunning me."
"To me, Speer truly stands out as an artist; the care he takes with composition is very apparent and a notable strength."
"Speer's work is complex, multi-layered, captivating, evocative, emotive and gorgeous even when there is a melancholy mixed with and beneath the beauty."
"If you're in Provincetown, do not miss Speer's new art gallery, CUSP. Curtis Speer's striking and transportive photography captures beautiful light with unique perspectives. Anyone showcasing a old-world Flemish still-life painting style in his photography is worth a look in my book."
"Curtis Speer captures the ephemeral beauty of a gorgeous flower in that moment when it just begins to wither. Even though shriveling petals peeking out from behind the full bloom speak to the short life of the flower and that its death and decay are not far off, Speer finds the beauty in the life and death and the tension between them."
"Speer is an extraordinarily talented artist with a mastery of vision, insight, and technical skills. His images are captivating, stunning, haunting, and beautiful. The subtle [yet] arresting emotions he captures are not confined to the four sides of his images."
"[Speer's photographs] evoke, for me, the image and feeling of Charles Demuth's work, particularly his painting My Egypt. Aesthetically and intellectually, the early American modernists, like Demuth, Hartley, Dove, O'Keefe and others, discovered, promoted and nurtured by that brilliant character Alfred Stieglitz, are compelling, brilliant, innovative artists who created works, both visually stunning and intellectually challenging."
"A masterful command of color, texture, light and shadows draw the eye into the images and capture the viewer's eye, attention and interest, making it challenging to look away, [to] look outside the frame. [...] Outstanding work."
"Speer continues to impress with his technical abilities, his whimsy, ingenuity and beautiful aesthetic. [I am] very happy to have serendipitously been introduced to [this] artist and his work."