Martha Armstrong
Gross McCleaf is participating in POST!
WEST, October 24, 1 - 6 pm
Featuring: Artist Talk with Ann Lofquist at 2 pm.
No RSVP is needed. Masks are required.
Big Oak, October", 24" x 36.5", Oil On Canvas
Ann Lofquist: A Return Home
Gross McCleaf is pleased to present A Return Home, the first solo exhibition by painter Ann Lofquist since her recent move back to the East Coast. After twelve years in California, Lofquist again embraces her love of the landscape specific to New England and the Shenandoah Valley. Featuring both small panel paintings and large canvases, this exhibit examines the challenges of landscape painting in the hands of a master. Beginning her exploration with small en plein air paintings, Lofquist finds locations that speak to her and offer a range of opportunities for subject and composition, often inviting multiple visits during different times of day and seasons. The task then becomes one of unconscious data-processing as the artist faithfully attempts to capture observations of light, space, and form.
English Rose On Panel, 6" x 9", Oil On Panel
Giovanni Casadei: Contemplations
Always painting directly from nature, Giovanni Casadei invites the viewer to share in his experience of seeing: to participate in the flood of feelings and intuitions that come from the act of making a work of art. The result is a sharing of perception between the artist and the viewer, as familiar objects and places are filtered through the eyes of the painter and offered to the observer as paintings that are intimate in scale but grand in impact.
This body of work reflects Casadei’s philosophy of trusting his instincts and establishing a personal relationship with what he observes during his process of painting. Casadei says, “I am in love with nature, with light, with form, with the natural abstraction that light creates; to see the common with an uncommon eye. I want simply to experience the moment and see what I can discover through the process and medium of painting….I am in a place of freedom, pure freedom of expression.”
Of Weddings Before The War, 47" x 62", Oil On Canvas
James Stewart: Recent Work - Influenced By Ilya Kaminsky's "Deaf Republic"
James Stewart is captivated by the human condition in times of major socio-political events. For many years, Stewart painted imagined scenes of cafes and nightlife in Berlin between the World Wars. He considered this to be, “…a turbulent but hopeful time that eventually turned tragic” and painted large groups of people cheerfully unaware of the impending rise of Nazism.
Recently, a friend introduced the artist to poet Ilya Kaminsky, and Stewart was struck by the similarities between their projects. Kaminsky’s 2019 work, Deaf Republic, follows the personal lives of characters living in a time of political unrest in an occupied country and details the uncomfortable realities of their behavior given the desperate circumstances...
We Invite You to Virtually Preview GMG's October Exhibitions!
CLICK HERE to Watch the Video
Email info@grossmccleaf.com for details & availability. Enjoy!
If Ying Li’s paint application suggests a furious restlessness, her work has been, for many years, no less unsettled in terms of geography. Over the years, the artist’s motifs have included landscapes in France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Switzerland, and – on this side of the Atlantic – Newfoundland, Maine, the Colorado Rockies, and upstate New York, as well as New York City.
What to do when a pandemic freezes travel world-wide?
Gross McCleaf Gallery and Blue Stoop are pleased to welcome Ilya Kaminsky for a special poetry reading event in conjunction with James Stewart's exhibition: Recent Work - Influenced By Ilya Kaminsky's "Deaf Republic". Following the reading, Philadelphia-based writer Sara Novic will be moderating a discussion with Kaminsky.
This event will run for approximately one hour and is offered both in-person and virtually on Zoom to provide a safe and accessible viewing experience for all. ASL interpretation will be provided along with priority seating upon request. Out of an abundance of caution, in-person attendees are required to present their COVID vaccination card (a copy or digital image will be accepted), and masks are also required for the duration of the event.
We encourage attendees to visit James Stewart's exhibition before or after the reading. Stewart's work is on view in the gallery from September 1 - October 23 with an opening reception from 2 - 4 pm on September 18. Locally owned bookstore The Head & The Hand will be onsite with copies of Kaminsky's & Novic's work for purchase.
“In early March 2020, Haverford College, like educational institutions throughout the country, closed its campus to visitors and moved classes online in order to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the months that followed, Ying Li, the Phlyssa Koshland professor in Fine Arts at Haverford, responded to the crisis with astonishing and prolific creativity. Comprising 47 paintings created in just five months, Blossoms in a Sudden Strangeness reflects a profound aesthetic discipline. Li began each painting through closely observing subjects she discovered in or near her apartment on Haverford’s campus, such as the view from her porch or cherry trees in bloom. Responding to beauty and ephemerality in nature, she abstracts and reworks each composition until her expressive gestures and densely layered surfaces convey the complexity of her observations over time. Reveling in possibility, she adds, spreads, and scrapes away paint, creating relief-like topographies. Amid the ‘sudden strangeness’ of the pandemic, Li was fortunate to safely remain on campus, taking inspiration from flora and fauna that have fascinated her for more than 25 years...
When I think about Kati Gegenheimer’s work, I think about time, and I think about my friends.
I also think about handfuls of glistening jewels, about orchestral swells and technicolor sunsets, about melodrama and rooms of secret treasure, about dayglow candy from another dimension. I think about golden flickering candlelight in a 1950s Disney cartoon burning out of the darkness. I think about the moment between confetti exploding into the air and when it begins to descend, stretched out into infinity. I think about what it means to give someone something beautiful...
Rocks, Trees, and Gardens: Paintings by Lois Dodd and Ying Li will open this Saturday and Sunday, July 10-11 from 1-5 pm, at Rosy End Post, 18 South Street, Greenport, NY. The exhibition will run for three weekends, through July 24-25.
Lois and Ying long have focused their paintings on the natural world. Close friends, they occasionally have journeyed together to paint side by side. During long careers, each artist has developed a style of painting that is uniquely her own, but their styles could hardly be more different. This show is an opportunity to see the work of two painters who use paint in radically different ways.
“I was here.
You were here.
I am here. You are here.
Stars aligned.
Stars align.”
In her paintings, Kati Gegenheimer uses color, pattern, decoration, and symbolism as ways to express love, ritual, and radical sentimentality. Her sensitivity to touch and brushwork on the canvas as a love letter to being present in a moment; asking us to slow down to see the everyday magic that we often only glance out of the corner of our eye - a shimmer, a twinkle, a cloud passing in the blue sky, a butterfly hovering to look at you. Gegenheimer emphasizes this need to be present in the moment. She writes:
“Time stopped when you entered the room.
You are here for a reason, at this very moment.
Some would say it is luck, others would say it was meant to be.”
