Four artists headline the latest show at Cousen Rose Gallery in Oak Bluffs. Paul Goodnight has charcoals on exhibit, painter Mark Zeender returns to the gallery after almost 30 years with new landscapes, Glenn Tunstull displays his “dashilist” watercolors, and Deborah T. Colter presents her mixed-media abstract paintings. In addition, artists who exhibited in July share space with these headliners in the gallery’s final exhibit of the season.
An artist who works in a variety of mediums, Mr. Goodnight is showing his black-and-white charcoal sketches as well as pastels. Concentrating on the human figure, his work conveys an intensity and complexity of composition.
Mr. Zeender’s marinescapes capture the color and nuances of water and shore in near abstract style. An Islander, he has exhibited at the Vineyard Artisans Festival as well as Cousen Rose. In his artist’s statement, he quotes poet Emily Dickinson: “Exultation is the going of an inland soul.”
Mr. Tunstull has had an active career as a fashion illustrator in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Wear Daily, and The New York Times, in addition to being an educator at the New School of Design, Marist College, Pratt Institute, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. “I have a preoccupation with water and light, which drives me to paint a particular setting,” he says in his artist’s statement. An extensive traveler, Mr. Tunstull creates watercolors that vary in subject from the Hudson Valley, Brazil, Australia, Bali, England, France, and the Caribbean. His Vineyard landscapes are executed in a style he calls “dashilism,” or brush strokes with rhythmic swirls.
Ms. Colter has lived on the Island since 1982. She works in mixed media, employing acrylic paint, prismacolor pencils, conté crayons, pencil, and pastel. Her highly geometric abstracts often use layers of cut paper and collage, and she sands, scratches, and paints to create multiple effects. In her artist’s statement, she says, “Often I think of the view from an airplane window and how the surface below is mapped out by the intervention of the human hand. The roads, the buildings and homes, congestion in contrast with open spaces and how those elements interact with natural elements and each other. There is an ordered sense of chaos, a quiet beauty, when the landscape is viewed from above.”
Emily Levett, assistant to Cousen Rose Gallery owner Zita Cousens, is celebrating her 15th year at the gallery. A librarian at the West Tisbury School, Ms. Levett, a Vineyard Haven resident, has a master’s degree in art history.
July Meets August show, Cousen Rose Gallery, Oak Bluffs. Show runs through September 13. For more information, visit cousenrose.com.
