Tag Archives: oil paintings

Dynamics

brooke lanier fine art

Fluid Dynamics, Geoffrey Agrons, Sebastien Leclercq, Deborah Weiss, and Brooke Lanier

brooke lanier fine art

820 S. 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147

Phone: 267-329-9653

Email: brooke.lanier@gmail.com

Website: brookelanier.com/fluid_dynamics

Fluid Dynamics

Geoffrey Agrons, Sebastien Leclercq, Deborah Weiss, and Brooke Lanier

November 15, 2019 – January 3, 2020

Opening Reception Friday, November 22 5:30pm – 8:00pm

Holiday Party Friday, December 20, 5:30pm-8pm

Water inspires a unique fascination as a visually complex, mesmerizing substance that is also essential for human life.   From the pristine to the toxic, turbulent to placid, Fluid Dynamics assembles a collection of photographs and paintings that address a diverse spectrum of ways of depicting, contemplating, and interacting with bodies of water.

Deborah Weiss’s oil paintings on panel are the most abstract and gestural pieces in the show, utilizing an intriguing absence of contextual cues as to the scale of the subject.  The palette and textures suggest shorelines with intricate deposits of silt, but they could easily be interpreted as storm systems, ocean currents, or weathered wood.

The patterns in Weiss’s paintings would feel right at home as vignettes along the shoreline of the Salton Sea in Geoffrey Agrons’s photos. In the 1950’s and 1960’s the area was home to luxury resorts. By the 1970s, agricultural runoff, evaporation, and low rainfall had rendered the water toxic and saltier than the Pacific Ocean. Massive fish die-offs, algal blooms, and related bird deaths rendered the area unattractive for those seeking a beach vacation.  Other photographs capture scenes from shorelines impacted by hurricanes, pollution, and drought. Independent of this narrative, the photographs contain melancholy yet peaceful vistas punctuated by bleached driftwood and architectural relics of nautical activity.

Agrons’ ecological allegories pair with Sebastien Leclercq’s scenes of shipping vessels that damage the very environment upon which their industry depends.  The views from different parts of the world, desert and arctic, imply different facets of climate change.  Leclercq spent five weeks aboard several ships in the Finnish Maritime Fleet, documenting the contemporary state of an ancient tradition. The boats are so enormous that at times they seem abstracted and transformed into colorful, geometric compositional elements rather than floating factories.

Leclercq’s views of ships lend context to Brooke Lanier’s paintings. The saturated colors and hard edges of boats and docks create a collage effect in real life.  Lanier pushes that line of thought and creates collage-based paintings that recombine beloved landscapes in the composited manner of unreliable memories. Alongside Leclercq’s photographs, Lanier’s paintings are reconnected to their origins, creating a dialogue.

Gallery Hours are Tuesday and Thursday 12pm – 6pm, Friday 11am – 5pm, Saturday 11am – 3pm, by appointment or chance.  The gallery will be closed December 22 – 29, 2019 for the holidays and open by appointment in January.

Thank you to Brooke Lanier for the content of this post.

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Elementos

Yehoshua Villarreal I, RACSOAIRE, Yehoshua Villarreal I, oil, acrylic, gold leaf, 96″ x 48″

ELEMENTOS

Tierra, Aire, Fuego, and Agua by Yehoshua Villarreal I

Opening reception Thursday, March 15 at RACSO Art Gallery

WHAT: Philadelphia’s leading Latin American Art gallery is premiering a new
series of paintings by award-winning artist Yehoshua Villarreal I . Elementos |
Tierra, Aire, Fuego, and Agua explores the subjects of earth, air, fire, and water in
Villarreal’s unique style of figurative images and structural compositions which
complement and complete each other in this series.

Yehoshua Villarreal I was born in Venezuela and moved to Miami in 1996.
Villarreal’s paintings are in museums, private and corporate collections
and he exhibits internationally.

“Yehoshua’s work is an exercise in provocative juxtaposition – the
imaginative and allegorical subjects challenge the precision and control of
his techniques,” shared RACSO Gallery owner Oscar Villamil.

RACSO Art Gallery represents local and international Latin artists.

WHO: Available for interviews and photographs – Miami based artist Yehoshua Villarreal I and RACSO Art Gallery Owner Oscar Villamil

WHEN: Thursday, March 15 | Opening Reception 6:00pm – 8:00pm

WHERE: RACSO Art Gallery | 1935 East Passyunk Avenue | Philadelphia, Pa
Exhibition Dates and Times | March 15 – April 15, 2018
Monday andTuesday 10:00AM – 5:00PM | Wednesday through Friday 10:00AM –
9:00PM Saturday 4:00 – 9:00PM | Sunday by appointment at 215.735.3515

ABOUT RACSO ART GALLERY | www.racsogallery.art
RACSO Art Gallery exclusively represents Latin American artists. Dealing in
emerging local and international contemporary Latin American art as well as the
‘Modern Masters’ of Latin American art including Botero and Villegas. Located at
the gateway to East Passyunk Avenue in the heart of South Philadelphia,
collectors can experience a range of works including paintings, drawings, prints,
sculpture, and photography. RACSO Art Gallery celebrates the beauty of the Latin
American art spirit with rotating exhibitions throughout the year.

INSTAGRAM @RACSO_Gallery | FACEBOOK @RacsoGallery

Thank you to Tara Theune Davis taratheunedavis@gmail.com for the content of this post.

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Leaf

Bill Scott, Hollis Taggart GalleriesLeaf and Line, oil on canvas, 63″ x 42″, Bill Scott, 2017

Bill Scott: Leaf and Line, Hollis Taggart Galleries

This month, Hollis Taggart Galleries will present Bill Scott: Leaf and Line, the artist’s seventh solo exhibition at the gallery, featuring twenty-five of Scott’s recent paintings. A catalogue accompanies this show with condensed critiques by eight contributors – artists, curators and writers – who offer very personal and inspired reactions to the painter’s lively compositions.

Bill Scott’s new body of work is rooted in his classic vibrant palette, fluid brush strokes and masterful balance of abstraction. Propelled by inspiration from nature, the painter continues his exploration of form and color in a fresh way. References to the natural world, details of leaves, blades of grass, branches and discernible elements of flora are boldly juxtaposed against areas of pure hues and spirited abstraction that dances with myriad details. The show once again is a testament to Scott’s imposing ability to dance the line between abstraction and representational, creating a tension in the viewer’s mind that asks the question; do we know this scene that is depicted before us? It is through this tension and this line of questioning that the viewer’s curiosity is peaked.

Bill Scott, Hollis Taggart GalleriesA Storybook October, oil on canvas, 48″ x 45″, Bill Scott, 2017

Demonstrating the confidence and control of a seasoned painter, Scott’s most recent studio offering reveals a freer, more expansive pictorial space and use of white. The surfaces of the works are comprised of layer after layer of paint – a skill he has been honing his whole career.  Complex, but never muddy, the overlapping elements in the paintings appear both spontaneous and carefully arranged at the same time.  A Garden in the Studio bursts with energy and is like most of Scott’s work, an affirmation of the sheer joy of painting. Similarly, in Leaf and Line, vague pictorial plant references are placed among undulating free forms of shapes and color and all set against a dramatic expanse of yellow in the upper quadrant. Harmony is always achieved with the painter’s virtuoso talent and pure intuition to combine hues, structure and movement.

Bill Scott, Hollis Taggart GalleriesHomage, oil on canvas, 60″ x 55″, Bill Scott, 2017

Scott, who lives and works in his native Philadelphia, spent what he considers to be pivotal periods of time working alongside Joan Mitchell in France and Jane Piper in Philadelphia.  He formally began his career studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1974, an institution at which he was to become a teacher for many years.  He is represented in countless museums, private collections and institutions, and he is a noted scholar on the work of the French Impressionist, Berthe Morisot.

Bill Scott: Leaf and LineHollis Taggart Galleries , Chelsea, 521 W 26th Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10001

March 15th through April 28th, 2018

Thank you to Ginx Hudgins for the content of this post.

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Far

Far From The Tree, Katherine Fraser, Paradign Gallery + StudioThe War of Independence, oil on canvas, 54″ x 60″

Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present
Far from the Tree

A solo exhibition of new oil paintings by artist Katherine Fraser on view February 23 – April 21, 2018.

In her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Katherine Fraser draws inspiration for Far from the Tree from fables and explores what it means to have control over our own destinies. Universally-known stories and endings are suddenly given the ability to change. The artist’s most cohesive series to date, each character is presented with the agency to alter their own outcomes.

In the work, The War of Independence, the natural beauty of the Acadian National Park
acts as the backdrop. Having grown up in rural Maine, the landscape is a reference to
the artist’s childhood – a symbol of a time when Fraser felt her most strong and
independent.

Fraser says, “When I use the rural landscape in my paintings it symbolizes
the homeland; I use it to create a feeling of peace and protection. I mostly paint solitary
figures, and being alone in nature is the best kind of alone. In nature I feel most myself,
vibrant, and at one with the world.”

Fraser’s figurative compositions ‘depict moments of quiet reflection and insight, of wonder, vulnerability, yearning, determination, humility, strength, and growth’. She cites realist painters Edward Hopper and Bo Bartlett as influences, but also sees parallels between her work and photographers like: Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark and Sally Mann. All of these artists act as storytellers, capturing individuals in moments and settings with a great deal of intimacy.

Far From The Tree, Katherine Fraser

By Example, oil on canvas, 56″ x 74″

Classically trained, Fraser exclusively works with oil paint for its flexibility and luminosity, striving to make her paintings beautiful, but also to emotionally engage with the viewer. Fraser likes to draw attention to dynamic and conflicting emotions within individual characters. In her overall practice she seeks to portray ‘our continual need to reckon expectations with truth, and the struggles we endure to feel satisfaction with our choices’.

In Far from the Tree, Fraser asks the viewers, “how much power do we really have to
change the narratives of our own lives”?

ABOUT PARADIGM GALLERY + STUDIO

Established February 2010, Paradigm Gallery + Studio started as a project between co-
founders and curators, Jason Chen and Sara McCorriston, to create a space to make artwork, exhibit the work of their peers, and invite the members of the local community to make their own artwork in a welcoming gallery setting. Over the years, Paradigm Gallery + Studio has become a gallery of diverse contemporary artwork from around the world, while maintaining a focus on Philadelphia artists.

ABOUT KATHERINE FRASER

Katherine Fraser has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United
States. She is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and of the University of Pennsylvania. As a student she received the Thomas Eakins Painting prize, the Cecelia Beaux Portrait prize, and the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Award, among others. Since graduating in 2002, she has received awards including the Lucy Glick Award and the Victor Klein Family Award. Her work has been published in Studio Visit Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, Die Blumen die Frauen, The Fertile Source, New American Paintings, The Southern Review, the Best of American Oil Painting, and more. Her work may be found in many permanent and private collectionsmnationally and abroad.

Paradigm Gallery + Studio 746 S. 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 10147

Thank you to Madison Fishman for the content of this post.

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