Color: Field and Form, Part 9

Marketing Mondays will return in mid September with an interview with Steven Zevitas, publisher of New American Paintings. In the meantime, I'm going to continue with Color: Field and Form. There's still a lot to show you.

Part 1: Truitt, Appleby, Jackson, Shils, Donaldson
Part 2: Estrada-Vega, Johnston, Korman, Gimblett

Part 3: Aaron, Chong, Glessner, Mattera

Part 4: Von Heyl  

Part 5: Goodwin 

Part 6: Florian 

Part 7: Hicks, Lasserre

Part 8: Hoke, Kline

Provincetown and Truro

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Those who frequent the Provincetown galleries in summer know that the exhibitions are two weeks long. Seems crazy but given that high season lasts for only three months, the condensed schedules make sense. If you want a real understanding of the Provincetown art scene, however, you have to keep going back, something I was only too happy to do. I was there in early June to run a conference and curate an exhibition of my own, Improbable Topographies, at the Rice Polak Gallery, and then again just after the Fourth of July, and again the third week of the month. In that period the exhibitions in town had changed three times. What you see here is what I saw between July 24 and 27.

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At the Schoolhouse Gallery: Bernd Haussmann's chromatic beauties

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We start at the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown's far East End, slip into ArtStrand across the hall, walk up the street to the Albert Merola Gallery, and continue to Kobalt Gallery. We'll end with a visit to the gallery at Castle Hill in Truro. I'm going to keep the commentary short because this is a long series, and there's that other thing I do--you know, with a brush--that I need to make time for.

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The Schoolhouse Gallery

Bernd Haussman

Ron Rumford

Clark Derbes

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Bernd Haussmann channels nature in a deeply personal way. In this series he does so with chromatic exuberance. Closer view of a painting below
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Two beauties by Ron Rumford were placed in the far corner on the flat file. They may not immediately conjure nature--and indeed, that may not be the artist's intent at all--yet there is an imprint of a maple leaf on the yellow field, a pentimento in angular counterpoint to the loopy abandon of the composition.

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Closer view of Pocket Byron 10, acrylic on board, 12 x 16 inches

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Still at Schoolhouse: Two views of Clark Derbes's standing sculpture, Kay, polychrome on wood, 20 x 14 x 9 inches. The artist has superimposed geometric order onto a faceted block of wood

Above: We're standing in the gallery looking into ArtStrand Gallery

Below: Looking at the work with the Schoolhouse Gallery behind it

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There was a lot of great art at ArtStrand but not necessarily in keeping with the theme of the series. I hope to report on more from and of Provincetown later in the fall, including the Motherwell show, Beside the Sea, and  Long Point: An Artist's Place, both on view into September at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and The Tides of Provincetown at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in nearby Dennis, through August 25. But back to our tour. Let's transition from the geometric to the lyrical and then to fluid abstraction.

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ArtStrand

Maryalice Johnston

At ArtStrand: Maryalice Johnston, Blue Wind Doodle, 2012, gouache and watercolor on plaster canvas (app. 24 x 30 inches)
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Albert Merola Gallery
Irene Lipton.
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At the Albert Merola Gallery: Irene Lipton

At the Albert Merola Gallery a short walk away, Irene Lipton had the solo. Taking an almost stylized approach to fluidity, Lipton showed a selection of easel sized oil-on-canvas paintings, all untitled. From the looks of it, Lipton--whose work I had not been familiar with--is a painter fully engaged with line.  Blocks of color seem to serve as foils for the achromatic meanderings.
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Above and below: Irene Lipton untitled paintings
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Above and below: More Irene Lipton untitled paintings

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Kobalt Gallery
Cherie Mittenthal
Mike Wright
Diane Brawarsky

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Next we go to the Kobalt Gallery where owner Francine D'Olimpio had mounted Three Women, Three Visions, featuring the work of  Cherie Mittenthal, Mike Wright and Diane Brawarsky, whose work is shown below in remarkable chromatic compatibility.

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Installation view with Mittenthal's Cape Cod depictions in encaustic: small foggy seascapes above a series of three charming houses, all very Land's End; Wright's eccentric sculptures built from found wood, and Brawarsky's mixed media constructions. (And isn't that sofa a welcome sight for visitors?)
See more of this show on Mittenthal's blog, Muse, Process and Flow

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At Kobalt Gallery: Mike Wright's dimensional homage to Braque

with detail below
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Castle Hill Gallery

Deborah Dancy

David Boyajian

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The last stop on this tour is the Gallery at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle--or The Castle Hill Gallery for short. The center's director, Cherie Mittenthal (the artist whose work you saw at Kobalt, above), curated a gorgeous show of works on paper by Deborah Dancy and bronze and ceramic sculpture by David Boyajian. Dancy describes her compositions emerging "out of an active engagement of gesture and process." Boyajian deals with "nurturing, generation and growth." The exhibition is a pas de deux of related palettes and fluid expression.

Deborah Dancy untitled painting, above, with a panoramic view, below, showing you where it is set 

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Another panorama, swinging toward the left, with Dancy paintings punctuated by Boyajian sculptures

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Below: A closeup of the corner seen at the far left of the panorama above

Below: One last image by Deborah Dancy to tide you over to the next installment