Ceramics, collages, oils, and a monoprint are among the new works at the Annual Group Exhibit by gallery artists, which opens on Friday, September 4, at the Jessie Edwards Studio on the second floor of the Post Office building. Light refreshments will be served throughout the day during gallery hours from 10am – 6 pm on Friday and Saturday, and from 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday, September 6.
Cynthia Guild, an artist new to the gallery this summer, has three new works in oil -on -panel of large working boats. “Night Freighter” is a dramatic view in light and shadow of the angles, railings, and structure of the pilot house of a freighter. In “Hamburg Sud,” the rust red hull of the container ship “Hamburg Sud” fills the entire center of the panel, while above, a board band of grey and blue suggests the sky. Smudges of red reflect the hull in the shimmering water in the foreground. The 36”x 48” “Captain Charles” depicts the sleek and elegant lines of a freighter gliding through a deep blue sea that dominates ¾ of the panel. The boat’s blue hull is one with the water but is also defined by the subtle tones of the grey sky.
Gillian Stevens has two new mixed media collages, each of a simple, weathered dory mounted on a long panel. Her method is both painstaking and inspired. Using a palette knife, Stevens first textures paper from a variety of sources and paints the paper using a variety of media – gesso, acrylics, pastels, to name a few. She then assembles the various strips of paper and then works on the subtle shading and details of texture by painting over the assembled pieces with acrylic washes and colored pencils. Rough twine coils from the bow.
“Rowboat, Breakwater Beyond,” an oil-on-panel by the late William Sommerfeld, is on exhibit for the first time at the gallery. It is a richly colored, near-abstract view of a rowboat on the beach in Old Harbor seen through broad brushstrokes of dune grass and foliage in the foreground. Dashes of white suggest a few boats anchored in the harbor, and beyond the breakwater, the bluffs of Clayhead on the left meet the water and sky in the background.
Ben Anderson’s new ceramics of fish and plates of shellfish glisten with texture and color as if just freshly brought from the sea. “Turquoise Scallop Plate” is mounded with plump unopened clams, oysters, and scallops. In “Littlenecks and Clams Earthenware Plate,” a smaller plate in celadon, Anderson has added a few mussels, snails, and scallop shells. The plate “Oysters, Scallops, and Clams takes its color and design from the streaks of the scallop shells arrayed upon it. The medium and large sea bass are true in size and color to the sea bass currently being caught in local waters, and they gleam with their creamy bellies and their blue and silver skin.
Three new still-lifes by Kate Knapp crackle with the freshness of newly picked vegetables. “Radishes in Blue Colander II” places the deep red radishes in a blue colander set on a large white platter with the yellow-green radish tops spilling over the edge. In “Cabbage and Fork,” the crisp and crunchy pale green leaves of a cabbage sit in a red and white bowl on a blue patterned cloth. The tines of the fork in the foreground reflect the color of the cabbage. “Turnips in a White Bowl” is a swirl of brushstrokes that conveys the shape of the platter and bowl in which the pale yellow-green turnips sit, with their long, sinewy brown roots tangling and spiraling around each other.
In contrast to all the color of these works, Stephan Haley’s muted tones in his monoprint drawing “Winter Fields” is a harbinger of that season to come. In this quiet, contemplative scene, Haley has used graphite to draw in the delicate lines of stone walls zig-zagging across pale fields still strewn with a few hay bales under a soft grey-blue sky.
The group exhibit will remain in place through most of September.