Amanda Church – Art Spiel

Life’s a beach, or maybe it should be if it could only resemble Tommy May’s resplendent scenes of light reflecting on Sammy’s bay beach on the east end of Long Island. Are beach scenes banal? Despite a robust art-historical lineage of beach paintings ranging from Milton Avery to Alex Katz, not to mention myriad others, including Picasso, Monet, and Degas, there’s a tendency to relegate the genre to kitschy decoration, best suited for motel rooms or dentists’ offices. Despite a softness to May’s surfaces that could cross into that territory, the paintings deftly skirt it through their atmospheric intensity and sophisticated touch.

Mary Heilmann, Broken Wave, 2022,Acrylic and paper mache pulp on wood and panel, 10×26.75×3-1/2 inches, photo by Dan Bradica. @Mary Heilmann. Image courtesy of the artist, 303 Gallery, New York, and Hauser & Wirth

Water Way, Mary Heilmann’s newly opened show at Guild Hall in East Hampton and her first large-scale museum show on Long Island’s East End, is a joyous celebration of 40 years of the artist’s career. The water-themed exhibition includes not only paintings and works on paper but also chairs, a small table, and ceramics, the latter either on its own or incorporated into a painting as in the 2020’s red acrylic Barrel and Tube. Heilmann is a longtime resident of Bridgehampton and her reverence for the ocean reverberates throughout, underpinned by an underground, punk rock/new wave, California surf culture ethos.

Author: Amanda Church

Tommy May: Sammy’s at Half Gallery

Mary Heilmann: Water Way at Guild Hall