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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
May 12 - May 18, 2005 Edition
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Art
Two
Chilmark artists, two perspectives
May 12, 2005
By Brooks
Robards
"By
The Shore" by Gloria Burkin.
"Beached" by Pierre Bourque.
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Two powerful and very different artistic perspectives
of the Island are on view this month in Chilmark.
Gloria Burkin's exhibit, “Changing Seasons,” offers sea
and landscapes both snow-bound and in the fullness of summer at Sovereign
Bank (formerly Compass Bank) through May 25. Pierre Bourque, a Canadian
who summers in Chilmark, shows a seascape series at the Chilmark Library
through May 31.
Ms. Burkin likes to roam the entire Island looking for sites to paint,
although the current exhibit focuses on up-Island scenes. “I
have recently become interested in how light forms beautiful shapes
when it hits the rocks by the shore, or the side of a boat, or the
colors of the Menemsha harbor,” she writes, “and how that
same light changes from season to season.”
Despite being a late bloomer as a painter, Ms. Burkin has reached
an impressive level of achievement. Expressionistic in feeling, her
work vibrates with color and energy. The rocks in “By the Shore”
teem with pinks and blues, as well as more conventionally dark shades.
In “Up-Island,” towers of clouds glow with peach hues, and
the artist builds up the vegetation in this landscape with both color
and paint. Her often pastel-colored skies have an 18th century feel.
Waves turn into a bouquet of color in a seascape set at Lucy Vincent
Beach, where the artist worked to recreate the sensation of walking
into the water. “I was so happy I could catch that feeling,”
Ms. Burkin says.
Meditations on sea and sky
Pierre Bourque has chosen 12 seascapes for his exhibit. To the casual
observer, it may seem that he has simply repeated the same scene of
blue-green sea, blue sky, and white clouds with a red buoy - all underpainted
with black. The only apparent changes in content come when he moves
a red buoy or line of islands, or shifts the horizon up or down.
Mr. Bourque's work is often described as impressionist in style, but
such a simplistic assessment would disserve this accomplished painter.
The minimalist repetition of subject in Mr. Bourque's exhibit forces
the viewer to explore his mastery of technique and appreciate the
subtleties of his meditations on sea and sky. If nothing seems to
change, everything changes.
Based in Ottawa, Mr. Bourque started coming to the Vineyard with his
parents in the 1970s. He studied at the Ottawa School of Art and has
been a member of its board of directors since 1992.
All of Mr. Bourque's seascapes seem busy with brush strokes. They
reveal no time of day or season. In “Towards Oak Bluffs,”
black underpainting appears to give the seascape's clouds a grayish
tint, making them look delicate and airy.
In “Beached,” the mast of a red boat tilts left, balanced
by a bight between narrow slices of land. Mr. Bourque's use of paint
is almost sculptural, built up in the sand portion of this painting
so that it creates white highlights with green and red echoes, while
the painted surface of the sky almost pours into the bight.
“Adrift” is the largest of the works and the only one that
is framed. Here it is as if the painter has lost himself in the white
of clouds, echoed in another, diagonally defined wedge of white between
water's green and sky's blue. Muscular brushstrokes combine with a
rendering of the fluid nature of things so that what the painter sees
nearly disappears into abstraction.
Mr. Bourque's web site, pierrebourque.com, includes a much greater
variety of his art. His work is shown at The Edgartown Gallery and
galleries off-Island.
Brooks Robards has published 10 books, 3 of which are poetry, taught
film for 20 years at Westfield State College, and frequently writes
about film and art for The Times.
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Martha's Vineyard Times 2005 - www.mvtimes.com
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