Marjorie Grigonis, Kristine Flannery at Third Street Gallery

Marjorie Gregonis, Present Tense, Third Street Gallery

Marjorie Grigonis, Present TenseThird Street Gallery

Marjorie Grigonis and Kristine Flannery‘s exhibit at Third Street Gallery (on Second) is a compare and contrast in action painting and abstract expressionism. Marjorie Grigonis calls her collection Present TenseKristine Flannery‘s exhibit is called The Multitudes; Grigonis’ mixed media and paintings uses mark-making and color fields with emotive color and Flannery’s action paintings exude energy. DoN talked with Marjorie Grigonis May’s First Friday in Old City.

Marjorie Gregonis, Present Tense, Third Street Gallery

Marjorie GrigonisPresent TenseThird Street Gallery

How did you get involved with Third Street Gallery?  “I’ve been part of the gallery for at least ten years.  Someone invited me to put my work up and be juried in and I’ve been part of it ever since.  I was one of the directors a couple years back which is a job no one covets, it gets passed on every two years. But, it’s a good  gallery, it’s good people and I think a really great showing space with the windows and the location.”

Marjorie Gregonis, Present Tense, Third Street Gallery

Marjorie GrigonisPresent TenseThird Street Gallery

DoN asked Marjorie Grigonis to describe her style, a combination of collage and painting, “Well, the painting is very much gestural and early was somewhat based on abstract expressionism but it’s been modified. As you can see, it’s not that free anymore. But the looseness that I started with, I find painting really hard, I struggle with it and I edit out. There’s probably six paintings underneath that painting. I just paint over, scrape off, and paint over.”

Marjorie Gregonis, Present Tense, Third Street Gallery

Marjorie GrigonisPresent TenseThird Street Gallery

“I started looking at all the scraps of things in my studio and making collages and it was fun. But I realized that I was thinking , in this show particularly, that there’s not any content, and there’s not a lot of content here, but, I was thinking just about the general anxiety of personal and global and I think a lot of these sort of reflected that. The woman holding her hand, the fear itself, I think even the paintings are just a little bit anxious, not totally.  I think there’s a good time going on in some of them.”

“I don’t mean to be a downer, I just think of me, there’s just a little more of a sense of that, sort of, pervading everybody and everything right now. I’m sensitive to that and I think humor is a way to deal with that and so I just thought some of these were pretty funny.  Maybe ironic.”

Marjorie Gregonis, Present Tense, Third Street Gallery

Marjorie GrigonisPresent TenseThird Street Gallery

DoN commented to the artist that anxiety is not what he felt from the colorful abstractions and that he overheard people saying how much they liked them, “Well, I’m glad because it’s partly just me, probably a lot of it’s me.”  DoN said, “Well, you are the artist.”

Kristine Flannery, The Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Kristine Flannery, The Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Kristine Flannery, The Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Kristine FlanneryThe Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Third Street Gallery is an artist-run cooperative art gallery established in 1972.

Kristine Flannery, The Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Kristine FlanneryThe Multitudes at Third Street Gallery

Kristine Flannery‘s action paintings represent movement and gesture through space.  The energetic marks and swipes of paint each try to capture a moment of movement, the paint permitted to be watery and move on it’s own, sometimes smeared into submission.  DoN spoke only briefly to the artist and her husband, she was fatigued at the end of the First Friday festivities but if you go to the Third Street Gallery website there’s a good statement about her goals with the show.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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