January 15 to February 5, 2015
Joan Mellon: Recent Paintings
Lester Rapaport: Recent Paintings
Kathy Bruce: Tapadas, Saints and Other Heroines
Joan Mellon
Joan Mellon is showing recent abstract paintings from the past two years. Mellon describes how painting for her “is pleasure – the smell of the paint, the richness of its color, the physical act of making a painting.” It is evident that Mellon’s paintings are driven by process. She begins by choosing her surface, size, and orientation, and then with a challenge she would like to meet in mind, she begins with making random strokes. Each mark suggests the next, until after perhaps hundreds of applications and wiping off the paint, the surface comes alive. The numerous layers of paint build a rich and complex final surface.
Lester Rapaport
Lester Rapaport’s first time exhibiting in the gallery will include three of his large, 54” x 84”, abstract paintings. Rapaport’s paintings have reflected his meditation practice for over twenty years. These paintings come from a series that Rapaport began after the sudden death of a parent. With this series, Rapaport developed his visual vocabulary to grieve; the dripped shape and disc represent other worldly spirit and consciousness. The colors reflect the somber mood. However, as the colors and title of his piece Hopefully suggest, Rapaport has moved on emotionally, while the visual vocabulary has taken on a life of its own.
Kathy Bruce’s first solo show at the gallery will feature mixed media paper works. Her intimate pieces reveal her visual investigations of the physiological and emotional relationships between the human form and plant life. Bruce’s collages meld structures of nature, plants, and trees with female forms into new anthropomorphic imagery. The horticultural etchings of J.J. Granville, a French nineteenth century illustrator inspired this series of work. The female body is central to her collages. Bruce questions, “What are humans if not plants and trees, themselves made up of organic material?”