Elizabeth Schwartz: Seasons

Elizabeth Schwartz' exhibit Seasons opened at the gallery last Friday with a large reception and great weather downtown!

Sometimes, opening receptions are a challenging place to really "see" and experience an artist's work. Certainly, they're meant as a celebration of the culmination of the grand effort to produce a body of work, and Elizabeth was definitely celebrated!

Now's the time to come in and really experience her paintings! The piece to the left, Edge of Spring, is a good place to start looking at her work. As she says in her artist's statement, "The theme for this series was stimulated by my ongoing reflections on the meaning and passing of life's 'seasons', for which these paintings serve as a metaphor." Keeping this in mind, look at the painting and consider the artist's words, "Spring is the season of energy, anticipation and excitement. Possibilities seem endless." Think of how green that first grass and winter wheat looks. Is it because it's really greener? Or because it's been so long since our eyes last saw that color?

Schwartz' work focuses on evoking nature, rather than depicting nature. Her concern is similar to the Impressionists' interest in capturing the feeling of being in nature, the light, the color, rather than trying to replicate a specific scene. However, Schwartz is more interested in painting in bold color, rather than muted tones.

In her technical approach, she applies many layers of paint, sometimes bold, sweeping strokes over thin washes, sometimes delicate marks and layers made with a palette knife. Texture is important in Schwartz' work, giving the feeling of looking through trees, leaves and branches, on to that deeper level of the landscape.

Schwartz is fascinated with the contradictory forces of nature - "its unpredictable, humbling power, juxtaposed with its soothing seasonal rhythms". She says, "Many of these works are painted on a large scale in order to convey nature's grandeur and power, turbulence and beauty."

Stop on in to the gallery and see the grandeur and beauty for yourself!

Nora Venturelli at Riverside Arts Center

"Figuratively Speaking: interpretations of the human form" opens at Riverside Arts Center, Friday, May 7 and runs through May 28. WSG artist Nora Venturelli has this spectacular piece on display. Vice Versa No. 25 is from a current figurative body of work and the development of this body has been incredible to watch. You can see the forms coming into view as they are sketched with the brush, modeled a bit and, finally, come to life in the foreground.

Nora is a virtuoso painter, studying landscape, still life and the figure with equal fervor. This piece should be in a museum!

Last Week for Photography Show - thru May 7, 2011

Terry Abrams

This is the last week to see Three Visions: Photography in Black and White at WSG Gallery. When you visit the show, you'll walk in to the gallery entry space and enter a meditative exhibit of images. Nature and architecture figure prominently in Terry Abrams' and Nina Hauser's pieces. Also in Dirk Bakker's work, but he photographs figures, as well, usually in a story-telling situation, in this show.

Nina Hauser

Nina Hauser uses infrared photography to create a mood in the landscape pieces in this show. Infrared photography filters out all or most of the visible light from the spectrum so that the camera reads only infrared light. This makes plants that are green almost glow, skies look dark and there are rich, dark blacks in the photos.

Dirk Bakker

Bakker has an image with an interesting perspective - a wide-angle shot that makes it almost look mapped together in Photoshop. What kind of a story is he telling?