Witmer, Patterson at Painting Center

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These Painting Center shows are down (April 22-May 23), but I didn’t want them to pass unnoticed at JMAB. Douglas Witmer 's Field and Stream, a group of small easel-size paintings was in the small Project Room. Field and Sream is the name of a hunting and fishing magazine (not sure if it's still published), so I assume Witmer's reference is to his terrain of solid color placed over an aqueous background of foggy and mutable gray. The balance of materiality and ephemerality, geometric and atmospheric, is just right.

Above: Douglas Witmer installation; below: an individual work. Sorry, neither the gallery website nor the artist's website gives specifics, and I don't have them in my notes, but the work looks to be oil on linen

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In the larger gallery up front, Carrie Patterson 's work was part of a three-artist show called Placing Color. I responded to Patterson's aproach to painting: numerous discrete canvases that appear to be built into one, and indeed her references are architectural.

Carrie Patterson, from the group show Placing Color. This work: 18 ft. St. Francis Xavier, 2008, acrylic on linen, 75 x 32 x 2 inches

I also liked the visual conversation that took place between her work and Witmer's, particularly those broad strokes of color asserting themselves over the whisper of unprimed or lightly stained canvas. Read more here.
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