Jason Ramos blogs about the paintings of John Mills which were recently on view at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica.

Ramos observes: "When taken at such a technically conceptual level, painting soon dovetails into an unpacking of language and perception in general, and it is quite genuinely and presently at this very abstract intersection that the work of John Mills, on its surface, finds itself… John Mills’s paintings are not a parody, a send-up, or appropriations of abstract paintings — yet they are still visibly informed by an educated contextualizing that perhaps can be viewed as a show of support for the stances the early abstractionists held that informed their work… Mills's paintings forge a future that is mined from history. The reasons for their resonance is connected to the reasons behind the work of those important, immediate post-Cubist years in Europe. Perhaps more importantly, Mills's work illuminates a contemporary relevance in regards to more formalist picture-making within the painting format."