We begin with five easel-size oil paintings by Joanne Freeman, three square works bracketed by shaped canvases. In her remarks at the opening, Freeman noted that this series was inspired by a residency in Otranto, Italy, where color and stark shadows stood out in chromatic and achromatic relief against whitewashed walls. (Freeman continued her residency in Provincetown at Gallery Ehva shortly thereafter, which you can read about here)
Freeman's looping gesture gives way to six oil-on-panel paintings by Emily Berger, each with a distinct and sensuous slump, as if giving way to gravity. While acknowledging the light and color of the urban landscape and the swelling of waves in her memories of a Wellfleet home, Berger defines herself as an abstract painter. In speaking of her work, she noted that several dichotomous elements inform the work: gesture and geometry, addition and subtraction of paint, deliberation and intuition
Emily Berger and Sarah Hinckley
The exhibition's curator, Sarah Hinckley is a native daughter, born and raised in Cummiquid--part of Barnstable Village--but now, like many of the artists in this exhibition, living in New York City. In her remarks at the opening, she acknowledged a lifetime of beach, marsh, sand and light as the elements that inform her painting, along with distinctly urban elements like riding the subway.
Berger, Hinckley, Joanne Mattera
We continue into the Ocean Edge Gallery, where an installation of 18 small color field paintings and several other works by Joanne Mattera occupy the space. Mattera describes herself as a formalist, a colorist, acknowledging that her aesthetic embodies a distinct textile sensibility. It is, she says, the legacy from an Italian immigrant family of weavers, tailors and dressmakers. The light is a legacy of living a lifetime near water in Manhattan and Massachusetts
Mattera and Hinckley
View of the far corner of the gallery, with Hinckley bracketing Mattera, and a series of four paintings by Mira Schor
Hinckley and Schor
Mira Schor is a painter and writer whose visual art often incorporates text. These four paintings were inspired by the early months of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Manhattan in 2012, when occupying often meant sleeping in the park. Schor came to see sleeping as a form of protest (as sit-ins were in the generation before this one). More of Schor's comments about the work, and links to other writings, are here
Beyond the installation of Schor's paintings, we catch a glimpse of Mike Wright's exhibition in the adjacent gallery, and then switch our perspective . . .
. . . to continue in our gallery to the work of Erica H. Adams
In her remarks at the opening, Adams talked about exploring a process-based contemporary dialogue of Nature versus Culture, created metaphorically with rich and unruly surfaces held in check by vertical stripes
Switching perspective again, we look past Hinckley's painting . . .
. . . into the small gallery . . .
. . . and turn 180 degrees to view the exhibition from a different vantage point. Mattera is at right. Then, in looking into the large gallery, we see Berger and, in the distance, Freeman
We return to where we began, now viewing Freeman's work, and that angled canvas from the opposite direction
