Galleries : Winsryg At Old Sculpin Gallery
Difficult to control, easily turned muddy, pastel can be a daunting medium for an artist. Not so in the case of Marsha Winsryg, whose landscapes are on display in the "New Membership Show" at the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown.
Primarily scenes of the Vineyard, the 19 Winsryg pastels in the show demonstrate a bent toward abstraction and a range of techniques.
In "Philbin Sunset" the artist uses horizontal wedges of strong blue, red, green and yellow to turn a familiar Island setting into a meditation on form and color.
Ms. Winsryg, who lives in West Tisbury, wields paler shades in "Sepiessa Winter," this time suggesting, at least to this viewer, that squares are not the only way to establish a viewpoint and the perceiving eye can round a vista into an oval.
In "Rift Valley, Tanzania," variegated colors pock a valley shadowed by cumulus clouds in a demonstration of how clouds often control both light and a landscape's appearance.
"Muddy Cove, Spring" mixes muted tangerine with buff and pale blue-green trees to illustrate how pastels can retain their distinct identity as a medium at the same time that they are used to depict a scene.
Two unframed works, "View of Lucy Vincent Beach" and "Tisbury Great Pond," simplify the shapes of dunes, clouds, water, and horizon to create a lyrical sense of abstraction.
Ms. Winsryg includes two gouaches in her show. In "Vineyard Haven Waterworks," she exploits the architecture of the Waterworks building to balance an unusually geometric form and its reflection in the water with more organic and rounded foliage and trees.
The two gouaches help the viewer further appreciate the technical accomplishments of this 25-year Vineyard resident. In the past Ms. Winsryg, who studied at Bennington and Bank Street, has shown her work at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury and Etherington Fine Arts in Vineyard Haven. Travel to Africa and Florence, Italy has kept her from exhibiting on the Island recently. The multi-talented Ms. Winsryg also belongs to the Spindrift Marionettes, a puppet troupe, and directs the West Tisbury bell choir.
Photos by Ralph Stewart
She is one of three artists who were accepted this season for membership in the Martha's Vineyard Art Association, which runs the Old Sculpin Gallery. Also on display is the work of Amaru Pereja, a Martha's Vineyard Regional High School graduate who recently completed a degree at Hampshire College. A photographer, he uses traditional color film, developing and printing it himself to produce large-format Vineyard landscapes that are strikingly handsome.
The third artist in the "New Members Show" is Susan Convery Foltz. A fourth-generation Vineyard native who now lives in Florida, she is a children's book illustrator working in a style she calls "Magical Realism." She also does custom watercolor portraits.
Ms. Foltz, who studied art at Syracuse University and the Boston Museum School, has a series of her watercolor illustrations from the children's book, "Thirty Dirty Sailors," published in 2007 by Vineyard Stories.
The "New Members Show" at Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown runs through Friday, Sept. 19. 508-627-4881.
