The new exhibition of work by Gretchen Feldman (1934–2008) is a sensory delight. “A Joyful Journey” is on view through Sept. 10 at the Feldman Family Artspace, a venue managed by Featherstone Center for the Arts at the M.V. Film Center. It is indeed a joyful ode and, in particular, to the Island Feldman so adored. “The Vineyard was an inspiration; I had to paint it,” Feldman said in a 1993 interview. And we are fortunate she did.
What strikes you immediately walking into the space is Feldman’s masterful use of transportive color. Using watercolors in various consistencies and pastel accents, she creates luminous landscapes and waterscapes that glow mysteriously from within. While all are Vineyard-inspired, Feldman’s alluring warm and cool color combinations make each unique.
Sometimes, Feldman created crisp delineations between the elements in the compositions, reminiscent of David Hockney’s bold, opaque-colored California landscapes. At other times, the distinctions are softer, as though the air through which we are looking is moist with mist and refracted daylight. The most abstract of these works call to mind Mark Rothko’s mystical Color Field paintings. As you continue to gaze, you also start to notice that Feldman sometimes nestled trees or houses in her scenes, enhancing their celestial atmosphere.
Feldman was a textile conservator before pursuing painting, and rich fabric textures and colors influenced her artistic eye. She first came to the Island as a child in 1938. Feldman and her husband Sam built a home in 1985 overlooking the Chilmark Pond behind Lucy Vincent Beach, which became one of her favorite subjects. Feldman began painting in watercolors around 1989, which she said “seemed very appropriate because we were surrounded by water.” When the couple moved here year-round in the 1990s, Feldman’s landscapes evolved substantially as she began to include iridescent pigment, crayons, colored pencils, and collage — and sometimes even applied her paint with a credit card or hotel key card.
Feldman’s remarkable variety within the exhibition is amplified when you start leafing through the striking, hot-off-the-press coffee table book with the same title as the show. The full-color, 240-page retrospective catalog, “Gretchen Feldman: A Joyful Journey,” demonstrates Feldman’s vast range of styles, from realism to full-fledged abstract designs. Her sensitive use of color, though, runs throughout her artistic evolution. The result is exactly what she wished, as quoted in the book: “My interest was always trying to achieve a goal of a balance of shape, form, and powerful painting.”
Feldman began sharing and selling her art first at the Chilmark Bank, and later at the Craven Art Gallery and others off-Island. She had solo exhibitions at art centers and museums, continues to have traveling retrospectives across the country, and her work is in private collections.
Louisa Gould, Vineyard gallery owner and director of the Gretchen Feldman Collection, who has been in charge of her work for the past nine years, curated the show and also designed and authored the book, selecting from among the more than 726 works in the collection.
Gould has curated annual exhibitions of Feldman’s work at the Feldman Family Artspace since 2015. “I keep going back and finding new inspiration. The collection is so vast that I’ve been able to pull many different themes and stories. For this particular show, I picked pleasing, joyful pieces. I’m finding for myself and at my gallery, people want something they can be happy about,” Gould reflects.
“I hope people feel uplifted and inspired by the exhibition, and know that these Vineyard works are painted by a beautiful spirit. I didn’t actually know her, but through her art, I’ve come to know her. And her work is really timeless,” Gould says.
Fortunately for us, this alluring exhibition and radiant retrospective catalog are a perfect endnote for the summer season.
“Gretchen Feldman: A Joyful Journey” is on view through Sept. 10. Some of the paintings are for sale, and a portion is donated to the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center. For more information, visit featherstoneart.org/feldmanfamilyartspace.html. The new book “Gretchen Feldman: A Joyful Journey” is available at the Louisa Gould Gallery, 54 Main St., Vineyard Haven.