plein air – Page 2

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September 4, 2023August 29, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

A Meditation on Artists’ Residencies, a Dune Shack and the Twilight Zone

Ray Wells dune shack with well pump in the bottom left foreground, Provincetown/Truro 2016, photo courtesy of the writer

Sometimes I find myself scrolling Instagram on a dark day in February or March, just wondering what it would be like to make art in a lighthouse…or in Robert Rauschenberg’s old fishing shack…or in a Florida swamp…or in a small RV in a Utah ghost town…or on an island in Italy. Artists’ residencies are a nice thing to dream about when you feel stuck or in a rut and when life is wearing you down with mundane pressures. Sure, there are the big ones like MacDowell and Yaddo, but those are uber-competitive and hard to get into. There are so many other off-the-beaten-path secret outposts that will happily allow a creative person to try on their lifestyle for a bit. As an artist, it’s so helpful to get out of dodge now and then and hit the road for new sights and sounds.

December 17, 2022December 9, 2022, by Art Spiel

Field Notes at Metaphor Projects

Art Spiel Photo Story

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Description automatically generated — Scherezade Garcia, Paradise According to the Tropics/Sunburnt Jesus, Acrylic, Charcoal on Linen, 72 x 48 inches

Metaphor Projects is an artists-run space for contemporary art and culture founded in 2001 by two working artists. Directors/ Curators: Julian Jackson and Rene Lynch have mounted more than 100 solo and group exhibitions presenting the work of hundreds of artists and spent two decades developing what they call “the social sculpture that is Metaphor.”

November 26, 2022November 26, 2022, by Meg Hitchcock

The Interaction of Light and Shadow: Susan English at Kathryn Markel

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Description automatically generated with low confidence — *Susan English, Still Light, 2022, tinted polymer on Dibond panel, 34 x 35 in. Courtesy of Kathryn Markel Fine Arts*

To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.

– Carl Jung

In her current exhibition at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Light to Light, Susan English explores the vagaries of light as it penetrates layers of polymer and pigment. Subtle gradations in color are infused with radiant light, recalling the sfumato in Van Eyck’s translucent skies or Cimabue’s blushing Virgins. The seamless transitions are achieved through the artist’s unorthodox technique of pouring thin layers of tinted polymer onto panels, then tilting the panels while the pigments settle and dry. The multiple layers interact with light to create varying effects – sometimes luminous, sometimes opaque – which are punctuated by cracks and blemishes in the medium as it dries. These accidents are essential to the piece, as they provide a counterbalance to the exquisite surfaces and tight control of their execution. Indeed, English manipulates the panel in such a way that crackling is anticipated, and she views the result as a simulation of the fissures and fractures found in nature.

July 11, 2022December 30, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Eric Wolf: When There is a Solid Fog on the Lake

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Description automatically generated — Eric Wolf, Mooselookmeguntic Lake, 2016, ink on paper 22” x 30”. Courtesy of Pamela Salisbury Gallery

Eric Wolf’s landscape paintings are made with ink on paper and reference nature—water, sky, trees. In their sharp light and dark shapes they resemble woodcut, linoleum prints or even highly contrasted black and white photographs, but the more you look at them, the immediacy of the painted ink comes through—from the artist’s direct observation of nature, through his mind, to his hand—in a magical transformation ink flowing on paper fibers becomes river and white floating shapes become clouds.

June 3, 2022December 30, 2022, by Thomas Motley

Healing- Mihee Nahm at Artspace 111 in Ft. Worth

*Night Walk # 3*, 2022, 60X40″, oil on canvas)

The foliate paintings of Texas artist Mihee Nahm evoke late 18th century pursuits of the sublime. They are at once botanical and reverential renderings. Nahm immerses the viewer in beyond-the-frame expansive space, a nod to an early hero, Pollock. But the broader macro implications are toward infinity. The mass of Nahm’s surface is composed of exquisitely detailed in-your-face foliage, like walking unexpectedly into low-hanging tree limbs, one’s head suddenly enveloped by unkempt nature.

November 3, 2021November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Jim Condron and Ilse Sørensen Murdock – Toss at Platform Project Space

Art Spiel Photo Story

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Installation view, Jim Condron (front), Ilse Sorensen Murdock (back)

At first glance, Jim Condron’s whimsical sculptures and Sørensen Murdock’s landscape paintings are an unexpected match for a two-person exhibition. Yet, in Toss, the current show at Platform Project Space, artist and curator Elizabeth Hazan made it into an engaging duet. The show runs the gamut from landscape paintings on canvas to paintings and sculptures made of scavenged materials, but regardless of the used media, both artists prioritize color, texture, and composition.

September 1, 2021November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Earthscapes: Emerging to a Brighter World: Pamela Casper at Wisner House

Art Spiel Photo Story

In her solo art exhibition at Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Pamela Casper invites the garden-loving public to reconcile a personal relationship of guardianship that goes beyond admiring nature’s beauty. The artist says that the trajectory of the work in this show follows her own path of transformation—from observing beauty and imagining nature “above ground” to exploring the endless networks hidden below. The show is curated by Executive Director Jackie Kondel and runs through October 31tst, 2021.

August 17, 2020October 13, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Noa Charuvi - Suspended on Site

Bundle, 2018, oil on canvas, 16×20 inches

Noa Charuvi’s paintings convey a distinct sense of place where narratives of the present interrupt those of the past with urgency, sometimes even violence . Yet, her places encapsulate past and present not only as a rupture but also as an ongoing flow of coinciding contradictory forces – ruin and construction, anarchy and order. No matter if the painting depicts an interior of a room or an exterior of a construction site, it frequently portrays a place that is devoid of human figures but charged with the aftermath of human actions. Even if human figures are present, they are typically placed in context of their larger environment, players in a powerful and mysterious systemic forces of history, city, society. Noa Charuvi shares with Art Spiel some insights on her ideas, work, and process.

June 1, 2020May 26, 2020, by Steven Pestana

Rachel MacFarlane’s Paradise at Super Dutchess Gallery

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Description automatically generated — Rachel MacFarlane | *Beacon* | Single-channel video | 32” (Animation still) | 2020

I haven’t seen Rachel MacFarlane’s painting Sliver (2020). It would be reasonable to assume that I had, because Sliver is the centerpiece of Paradise, the show that this review is about. In fact, Sliver is the only painting in Paradise.

May 21, 2020November 2, 2022, by Catherine Kirkpatrick

Artists on Coping: Melanie Vote

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

*Melanie Vote, In Studio, photo credit: Jessica Glick*

Though Melanie Vote has lived in NYC for over 20 years, she grew up on a functional farm in Iowa. Her work straddles these two worlds, investigating the complexities of the human-land relationship, the cyclical nature of all life, and the impossibility of permanence. In temperate months she works remotely, painting outside. She is a visual scavenger collecting passages, then returns to the studio to reconstruct layers of a place, weaving them together into open-ended narratives. Her most recent body of work, The Washhouse, Nothing Ever Happened Here, at Equity gallery is on view virtually, via Artsy.