|
Weather
missing? Click here
 
 
|
The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
June 9 - June 15, 2005 Edition
Web
Comments
- Email Submissions
Art:
Bouquet
of Vineyard landscapes
June 9, 2005
By Brooks
Robards
There is
plenty for everyone to see at "Vineyard Landscapes,"
the new show at Featherstone Gallery. Close to 20 artists
are displaying their work at the show, which runs until July
6. Photo
by Susan Safford
Kathleen and Kelsey Trepa enjoy looking through Paul
Rezendes's newly released book of photographs "Martha's
Vineyard Seasons." A selection of his photographs also
hang on the walls at the gallery.
"Twin Lambs," oil on canvas by artist Ruth DeWilde-Major.
Judi Williamson stands in front of her oil paintings. |
Fifteen oversized
color photographs by summer visitor Paul Rezendes dominate the group
landscape show at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs.
The Center will host a second reception for the artists and their
work on Sunday, June 19 from 4 to 6 pm. The show opened on May 29.
Rezendes, who lives in Royalston and who has visited the Vineyard
since 1988, has built a reputation as the author of books on wildlife
and tracking as well as photography. Conventional in subject choice
but arresting, his light jet prints on Fuji Chrystal archive paper
powerfully convey the intensities of Vineyard colors and light.
His prints become particularly evocative when he works with muted
beach colors or scrub oak, as in “Late Light,” “Winter
White,” “Sand Creatures” and “Cliff Walk.”
“Oak Forest” and “Oaks Intertwined” illustrate
his longtime experience in woodland observation and sensitivity to
subtleties of color. “West Chop Lighthouse” shows another
side of his talent in its clarity of image and composition. Rezendes
has published a number of photographic histories of lighthouses.
Featherstone has wisely divided Rezendes’s work into two sections
of the gallery space in order to give adequate play to the 22 local
artists whose work is also on display. The other photographers in
the show, however — Keri McLeod, Jeanne V. Campbell, Evelyn Jo
Hebert, Amy Marie Williams, Harvey John Beth — have a hard time
competing with the size and scale of Rezendes’s work. Perhaps
Featherstone could also mount a show devoted entirely to photography
that does their work justice.
It is also difficult to do justice to so many artists working in such
a variety of media (oil, acrylic, pastel, monotype, watercolor) and
at so many levels of accomplishment. Some artists — Mary French,
Judy McConnell, John Holladay, Rose Treat, Nancy Furino, Fred Messersmith,
Traeger DiPietro — have mounted only one work. For instance,
French’s “Fall Field Drill,” achieves a mastery of
brushwork and color balance in its dark green cedars with blue shadows
marching through a field of yellow grasses with purple shadows.
Treat’s reliably interesting seaweed composition, “Tiasquam
River,” mixes dark and translucent brown textures in blocks and
filaments of seaweed to create a semi-abstract sense of water and
woods. Furino has included a handsomely classical “Lucy Vincent
Beach” informed by her modern sensibility but unlike much of
her other work in colors and stylistic effect. Rachel Paxton’s
“The Lagoon,” done with a palette knife, fairly bounces
with color and movement.
It is easier for the viewer to appreciate individual artistic styles
with those who are exhibiting more than one work. Three watercolors
by Nancy Kingsley incorporate a fairly somber range of colors for
that medium. Of the three, “Polly Hill” seems the liveliest
and most open.
Two monotypes by Sheila M. Fane capitalize on a narrow, oblong shape
that especially in the case of “Farm Field” plunges the
viewer into the mass of a yellow and green field. Maggie Pepp includes
three frolicsome watercolors, “Story Book Red House,” “Sunflowers”
and “Gingerbread Park.”
Douglas Peckham’s work is represented with five Dufy-esque pastels.
The three smaller works seem most successful on a compositional level.
Busy with the pink splashes of beachplum roses, “State Beach”
shows off Peckham’s lively appreciation of color.
Lynn Hoeft’s watercolor, “Tisbury Waterworks,” is the
piece most clearly influenced by graphic design. She has framed her
view of the brick and gray gables of the waterworks with large and
small leaf patterns. There is also a strong sense of design in Judy
Williamson’s “Farm Pond,” and the oversized leaves
of “Squibnocket Beach Roses.”
The black silhouettes of two bare-branched trees, reflected in water
and echoed in two more trees mid-ground, dominate Ruth DeWilde-Major’s
“Keith’s Pond.” This work generates a tension between
the flatness of the trees and the three-dimensional landscape into
which they are set.
Three of Ellen McCloskey’s pastels are a welcome addition to
the exhibit and illustrate her ability to work in this medium without
falling prey to sentimentality. In the winter landscape, “Skaters
on Seth’s Pond,” McCluskey has united the sweep of light
with the skaters’ movement. “Eel Pond Autumn” uses
two wind-gnarled Vineyard trees as its distinctive focal point, and
the somber color scheme of “Last Roses” demonstrates how
the artist can use light as compositionally defining.
In “Spring Green,” Nina Gomez-Gordon deftly incorporates
blacks to define a world of bright colors. Joan Fresher’s “Path
to the Harbor” and “Polly Hill Visit” round out the
exhibit, the great pleasure of which is seeing such a variety of viewpoints
housed under one roof. The show will remain up until July 6.
Brooks Robards is an author, poet, and freelance writer who lives
in Oak Bluffs in the summer.
|
| Send
this page to a friend:
|
|
©The
Martha's Vineyard Times 2005 - www.mvtimes.com
|
| |
|
|
