Pink Hydrangea

24" x 24", oil on panel

I enjoy painting every dot. They are each a gift to someone else (the viewer) like sharing a piece of gum. I paint them for my own enjoyment, satisfaction, and centering first. They are reduced/concentrated elements of calm even when bouncy. They are complete in themselves, in their own location, suspended alone while part of a group like individuals in society.

Pink Hydrangea is a follow-up to Blue Hydrangea. Rather than a mandala type circular arrangement, it is a diffused square field. The globe form of the flowers is less accentuated in favor of the all over, hovering field. Quadrants advance and recede as do individual dots, activating the eye. Check out my Hydrangea oil pastels, too.

I'd like to draw your attention to the paintings and relief sculpture of Ian Tornay on view at the Bowery Gallery, New York City through March 26th. The press release for the show is as follows:

Ian Tornay paints lush, green landscapes in rural northeastern Pennsylvania and in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. In views of farms and rivers, Tornay paints with energetic brushwork that leads from foreground to sky in uninterrupted rhythms. He focuses our attention on the connections and fluid interplay of the elements: clouds, trees, fields and farm buildings.

For this show, his sixth at the Bowery Gallery, Tornay also presents a series of still lives. In these works, he contemplates the symbolism of each object and the different realms they belong to. Domestic objects, tools and pure geometric elements share the tabletop stage surrounded by dark, theatrical backgrounds. In these elemental compositions, he draws contrasts between permanence and decay, opacity and transparency, organic and man made objects.

Tornay also includes relief sculptures carved in wood. Each piece is carved from a single piece of wood that has been cut apart and rearranged. The jigsaw puzzle arrangements emphasize the connectedness of different objects with each other and with their tabletop environments.

Originally from New York, Ian Tornay lives in Philadelphia and teaches art and interior design at the Delaware College of Art and Design in Wilmington, DE. He was educated as an architect at the Cooper Union, NYC before receiving an MFA in painting from Queens College, NYC. His work has been reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer and in The New Republic.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm. Please contact the gallery for more information or tornayian@gmail.com

Iris Series, 4 iPad, 1 oil on panel

#1

#2

#3, Flowers and Chair

#4, White Flowers

Iris, 24" x 18", oil on panel

I would like to draw your attention to the new exhibit by artist Iris Osterman at the Bowery Gallery in New York City. An excerpt of her press release:

"Bowery Gallery is pleased to present the third exhibition at the gallery of works by Iris Osterman, whose starting point are the streams, falls, rock formations and forests around her home in Massachusetts. Working with a restricted palette in oil and encaustic, the images come from the area where she has lived for the past two decades, as well as from trips to Maine, New York State and California."

For more information and to see images from the show, please consult the Bowery Gallery website.

This series of irises were done from life. The iPad images informed the oil painting. I like their boldness, snappy, and the complementary colors of purple and yellow, yellow-green. Some of them relate to other abstractions I have done including Blue Yellow Radiant from 2009.

I love the way Matisse uses chairs in his work as in the stolen drawing, Nude in a Rocking Chair, and the painting, Interior with Yellow and Blue. He loved curves and arabesques and he used the structure of an arch-backed chair to make those, not unlike the arms of the figures in Dance I.

Strong verticals provide visual support for the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles, energetic lines, curved flowers, and the "follow-the-bouncing-ball" circles. If you want a smile and some nostalgia, check out the Comin' Round the Mountain 1949 cartoon on You-Tube and head to 4:10 in to get to the song. I just love that and remember singing along to others like it. So there's your pop culture reference. You can stay tuned if you are a die-hard paint fanatic.

Technical shop talk:

Color in oil painting can be very rich, a quality I wouldn't use to describe digital color; that would be better described as "vibrant". The oil painting leans more toward organic color rather than synthetic. Even within oil paints there are some considered "organic" and others "synthetic" in actual composition. Newer colors like quinicridone mageta and the pthalos are synthetic while cadmiums, olive greens, ochres, etc. are considered more organic (not in the farming sense but as more natural :). Synthetics began being made in 1935, followed by many more in the 1960's, from raw materials taken through chemical reactions. Organic pigments are made with mined ores or other earth substances (clays, mica, silicas) .

[Mayer, Ralph. The Painter's Craft. An Introduction to Artist's Methods and Materials. Revised and updated by Steven Sheehan, Director of the Ralph Mayer Center, Yale University School of Art. New York: Penquin Group. 1948. 1991. ]

Reception

The opening reception for Images of Optimism, my current show at the Bowery Gallery in New York was a lot of fun; thank you to all who attended. I made sure not to over-hang the show and felt good about the work. You can take a virtual tour here beginning at the entrance.




After the opening I went to the cd release party for my cool brother-in-law, musician Andreas Sahar. I love his new cd, Crossing Over, & he is so passionate that to me he seems like a musical Van Gogh. He's in ITunes if you'd like to look him up.

My friend, the writer Rob Staeger, had some observations of the show. Of particular interest to me is how he notes the difference between my work and landscapes done on site.

http://robstaeger.blogspot.com/2008/11/oasis.html

Barbara Grossman, a painter, friend, and former professor of mine had this to say, "I love the way you have found strength in the summarizing of your view. They are not plein air paintings in the traditional sense but you take us there." To me it parallels what Rob said.

Once while in grad school at Penn, Barbara saw what I was working on and said, "Don't do that again!" among other constructive things. Uncompromising and visually brilliant, I can always count on her to tell me the truth and bring insight as well. She is a great teacher.

New York City Solo Show Dates

Pink, Green

oil on panel

24" x 24"


"Nicole Maynard: Images of Optimism" runs October 28 - November 22, 2008, at the Bowery Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, 4th floor, NY, NY 10001 646.230.6655. The opening reception will be Saturday, November 1st from 4 - 6 p.m.; the public is invited. A full press release will be posted sometime in September.

I am looking forward to the show. I am still painting towards it and have some ideas which works to put in. I began this blog immediately after my last show, so I have quite a bit of work to choose from. It will mainly be paintings, but I am thinking of showing a folio of small prints (The Butterfly Book) on a pedestal for visitors to handle with gloves like many artists books (check out this on-line collection at Otis College of Art and Design ) are exhibited. I will do the same for a book of watercolors I am working on, if I am happy with it in the end.

I am just glad the show closes after opening night of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because my husband, son, and I are die-hards. I'm hoping we can see it in IMAX 3D. Taking down isn't as hard as hanging, but it is still quite a job; this will give us something extra to chat about while we spackle.