A vibrant example of David Aylsworth’s celebrated "controlled informality," Interfering Friends May Frown captures the artist’s unique ability to balance geometric structure with raw, expressive gesture. Painted in 1998—an era marking Aylsworth’s confident stride into his mature style—this intimate vertical composition serves as a masterclass in color theory and spatial tension, where a rhythmic column of coral and tangerine stripes pushes against cool, atmospheric washes of sky blue and mint green. The forms are purposely imperfect, utilizing thick impasto and visible brushstrokes to reject slick polish in favor of what the artist calls "felt thought," while the central, tombstone-like olive shape and encroaching black bar suggest a narrative of obstruction that subtly echoes the work’s wry title. Based in Houston and an alumnus of the prestigious Core Program, Aylsworth is a defining voice in contemporary American abstraction whose work is held in major permanent collections like the Dallas Museum of Art and the MFAH; this piece, signed on the canvas verso (currently preserved behind the frame’s backing), offers a rare opportunity to acquire a work from his pivotal late-90s period that perfectly encapsulates his reverence for early American Modernism and the intimacy of the Texas abstract movement.
Texas Artist
1998
