Turpentine Gallery opens with a Zen-like atmosphere

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Milling about, drinks in hand, guests were taking in the beautiful tree-rimmed back garden at Mitch Gordon’s Turpentine Gallery opening last weekend. The evening was a sensory experience filled with gifts of art and nature for the eyes, music for the ears, and tasty tidbits to try.

People were wandering the lawn admiring Steve Lohman’s whimsical sculptures, whose first show on the Island was in 1978. His one-line, kinetic, stainless-steel pieces create three-dimensional line “drawings” in the air of enormous birds, blooming flowers, and animated people playing the flute or sitting engaged in conversation — all interacting with the environment. We can interact with the art ourselves, as the slightest touch sets them into a wobbly motion that animates each with a distinct life of its own. Summer resident Allen Kaye says, “I find his art very engaging. It drew me in. I love how they move and interact with the atmosphere.” Besides their motion, they throw wonderful shadows, which shift as the light changes. Perhaps Merissa Nathan-Gerson, a summer visitor who used to live here year-round, describes Lohman best: “He’s an intrepid, ever-producing, wonderful wunderkind.”

The outside of the gallery is appealingly rustic, but don’t let that fool you. Walking into the renovated, state-of-the-art first-floor room, you are transported by the cool air and sounds of Tibetan bowls that lull you into an almost meditative state, which is perfect for viewing Gordon’s own art. “I find this music has a way of helping to clear the mind,” he says, “I want you to be as at peace as possible.”

Gordon hangs his very long, large paintings with plenty of space between them so that you move from one to another, taking in each fully. He paints vast, narrow, triptych seascapes, locating us on the water instead of land. We seem to be quietly drifting the length of the shoreline from Aquinnah to Menemsha Hills, the Brickyard, past Cedar Tree Neck, all the way down to Woods Hole and Cape Cod. But the land itself is barely discernible on the horizon against the sweeping sky. What draws you in, though, is the enormous expanse of swells and undulating water below that, with the surrounding sounds of the Tibetan bowls, places you on the boat from which Gordon actually saw these vistas.

“The goal is to put you deep into the sea,” he says. “I want to give you the feeling of immersion, being on the water and connected, not just to the water, but to the rest of the planet.” In capturing the essence of the vastness of the sky and water, it does just that. Gordon’s desire is, he says, “To go super-deep. We can create the kind of world that we want to live in. What can I do as an artist to make the world a better place? This is about reconnecting to that. When I’m out at sea, it’s my temple, my place where I feel connected, and feel very small. It’s the same reason we go to the beach and stare at the horizon. It gives us a really deep spiritual connection.” Seasonal resident Judy Plotkin says, gazing at these vistas, “They are just stunning.”

Also impressively large is Gordon’s painting of a single nautilus shell. In “Dreaming to Life,” it fills the entire 30- by 30-inch canvas. His rendering illuminates this wonder of nature. Gordon explains, “I had been doing a lot of architectural work before this, and I was working with a client who wanted me to build their house based on the Fibonacci sequence.” This propelled him, he says, “into studying quantum physics and finding the depth, the beginning of time and space, and how to represent this. A nautilus shell is a really good way to do that.” Like his other work, the painting is an artistic representation rather than aiming for photorealism. The creamy shell with light brown highlights seems to emerge from the surrounding space, which is also rendered in creams, but with tints of light Chinese jade green.

The gallery continues upstairs, which is a living space for an artist in residence. Here we see some of Gordon’s precursors to the seascapes downstairs. With these more abstract, Rothko-like paintings, Gordon explains that he was working with the concept of “as above, so below,” referring to how he cut the canvas horizontally in half so that the sky and water are perfectly balanced. Gordon draws us in by playing with his vast areas of color, sometimes using linseed oil and varnish to create an alluring luminosity, and at others, thinning out the paint with turpentine so it becomes a thin wash. Among his other pieces are extreme close-ups of plants with leaves that fill the space to capacity, thus also dissolving into abstract compositions that convey the essence of nature.

Walking away from Turpentine, you feel, as Lori DeSantis shared, “It’s a beautiful, lovely space. It’s like a gallery plus a sanctuary and Zen garden where you can just come and really take in the work.”

Turpentine Gallery, 554 State Road, West Tisbury, open 11 am to 5 pm, Wednesday through Sunday. Visit turpentinegallery.art.