Gallery Café
Relax with a cup of Harney & Sons Fine Tea or Coffee in our Gallery Café where you can take in our current exhibit, showcasing local artists.
NOW SHOWING
The Art of Susan Rand
Also voted “Best Hipster Hangout” by Hudson Valley Magazine.
Click here for submissions information.
Current Exhibit: MARKING TIME: The Work of Ernest Shaw. March 23 - June 25, 2019
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Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23. 4:30-6:30 PM.
Ernest Shaw has work in nearly 50 museum, university and public collections, and hundreds of private collections nationwide.
Although he began his career as a physician, psychiatrist, and psychotherapist, Shaw always had a parallel interest in making art. After having a powerful dream about the iron age, he bought a welder and taught himself to weld and work with steel. A self-taught artist, he drew on his lifelong fascination with making objects out of any materials at hand and gained an empirical knowledge of steel by hammering steel plates and forming the punctured and ruptured sheets into closed steel Pods, his earliest series. He also began partially encasing chunks and slabs of bluestone in steel, and these pieces, along with the Pods comprised the work in his first show, two years later, at the gallery at SUNY Ulster. Work from these series was acquired by the Rockefeller collection and was exhibited in group shows at the Storm King Art Center. The following year, having built cranes to allow the scale and direction of his pieces to grow exponentially, resulting in a sold-out exhibition at the Milwaukee Arts Center, and the acquisition of four of his pieces by the Bradley Sculpture Garden.
In November 2018 Shaw began to explore and master a new medium – Photography. As Lynn Woods wrote in a review of his first photography show at the Muroff Kotler Gallery of Visual Arts at SUNY, Stone Ridge this past November, “While the medium of photography might seem an odd choice for a sensitivity that revels in physicality and process …and whose figurative imagery revolves around myth, the self and primal archetypes, Shaw’s photographs explore the same terrain, representing a continuum, rather than a break from his earlier work.”
This exhibit, Marking Time, explores his concerns with time, change and mutability, the nature of ‘self’ and shadow, mortality and our place in the order of things. See more at ernestshaw.com
Click here for full bio.
Artist Resume
Artist Statement
The photographs in Marking Time integrate my lifelong concerns with mortality, the nature of the “self” and shadow, and the relentless search for integration and wholeness, particularly in the consequences of action and gestures, of moments and eons. This show primarily focuses on photography, a “new” medium in my 50-year career with sculpture, painting, and drawing.
One of these series, Are We Flesh or Wood? explores our fundamental unity and relatedness with the natural world, of life with death. A second series, Memento Mori, addresses the condition of all things – that we are not here forever, and that mortality is built into our bones, blood, and soul. It asks that we remember our impermanence and fosters a deep interconnection with our world while we can. I consider these series’ homage to this world in constant flux. All things ride the one wave of time past, present, and future. We bear witness to this life, with all its joys and sorrows, dancing and stillness, youth and age, birth and death. Constant change can never be made to stand still. If metaphorically god is in the details, so is love, life, and of course, art. I see these photos as rejoicing in this, challenging us to see on many levels. This moment, then this …
The photographs, primarily visual, are also deeply grounded in our psychological condition, our relationship to ever-changing time and place. In a way, we measure time by the marks we have left, fleeting yet indelible, encoded in the very fabric of time. These themes resonate with my other career as psychiatrist, psychotherapist and longtime teacher of mindfulness meditation practices. As I have written, “articulate compassion is common … silence is the dialogue of centuries”. This body of work asks, “are we one, or two … or none?”
Past Exhibit: Artists of the Hudson Valley: November 3, 2018 - February 5, 2019
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Our Winter Exhibition features the work of five outstanding Hudson Valley artists — AUDREY FRANCIS, ROBERT HITE, ROXIE JOHNSON, NORM MAGNUSSON, and NADINE ROBBINS. Each artist lives and works in the central Hudson Valley and each is a master in their oeuvre. As individual as each artist’s work is, there are common threads that run through the works shown that speak to current social issues, most notably our humanity.
Left to right: Audrey Francis, Robert Hite, Roxie Johnson, Norm Magnusson, Nadine Robbins
AUDREY FRANCIS holds a BFA from Syracuse University and completed her residency at the Nantucket Island School of Design and the Arts, MA. Francis has taught painting at SUNY, New Paltz and design at Dutchess Community College. In her evocative paintings and mixed media works, Francis uses a sequence of motifs seemingly taken from deeply personal and mysterious iconography and pairs these with flat planes of color and pattern. Flatness is a guiding principle in her collage series and the most recent paintings. In these works, negative space is paired with figurative and abstract patterning in bright hues. Read more…
ROBERT HITE was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. His work contains sociological and humanistic themes and narratives. Images of structures, dwellings, and living spaces have become central to his recent work. Originally from Virginia, Hite spent a stint as a studio assistant for the Color School painter Leon Berkowitz and enjoyed success in the eighties and early nineties as an abstract landscape artist in Washington, DC. Hite’s work has been shown widely in museums and galleries all over the country. He now works in photography, painting, and sculpture, which often intersect through common imagery and sentiment. Read more…
ROXIE JOHNSON holds an MFA in Illustration from Syracuse University and has worked as both fine artist and visual arts educator for more than four decades. Known for her unique approach to the etching process, Johnson has studied with master printers Ron Pokrasso and Dan Welden, and been the recipient of awards on both the east and west coast, twice from the National Association of Women Artists. It was during her printmaking career that her cut, paste, and layering process developed. Her collage techniques remain prevalent as one of the trademarks of her work.
Read more…
NORM MAGNUSSON is an artist and political activist and founder of the art movement ‘funism’, he began his career creating allegorical animal paintings with pointed social commentaries. Eventually, he became more and more interested in political art and its potential for persuasion, but he always likes to retain a certain whimsy and humor in his work. In his ‘Decorating Nature’ series of photographs, Magnusson paints on, or colors, pieces of nature, and says that “We use nature how we see fit: we strive to bring order to it, we try to make it prettier…more profitable.” The images in the series are all about those things — but also about beauty. Read more…
NADINE ROBBINS contemporary style is distinguished by a masterly command of academic painting techniques paired with an irreverence for rules, gender, and beauty. Much of the painter’s practice focuses on themes of defiance. Robbins has earned great admiration for her iconoclastic nudes, as well as an ongoing series of portraits that oscillate between the mysterious and the candid. Robbins’ use of luscious jewel-toned paint and high-fidelity realism ties the artist to the late twentieth-century and contemporary traditions of hyper-realism, photo-realism, and super-realism. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London. Nadine is represented by Anthony Brunelli Fine Art, NYC. Read more…
Images, clockwise from top left: “Hill and Hollow,” 43×60”, oil on canvas – Audrey Francis; “Birdstack Black,” 40×84”, oil on canvas – Robert Hite; “Decorating Nature: fig. 138: Beauty Follows Fast After Some Spring Showers,” 13×10”, archival print – Norm Magnusson: “Lost G(Love),” 38×38”, mixed media & collage – Roxie Johnson; “Sativa Sunrise,” 24×24”, oil on linen – Nadine Robbins.
Past Exhibit: GETZ: Covers from “The New Yorker” Magazine. June 2 - Oct 29, 2018
“Arthur’s paintings are a chronicle of New York’s moods to be set alongside Guardi’s paintings of Venice.” – John Updike
Arthur Getz is best known for his fifty-year career as a cover artist for The New Yorker magazine. Between 1938 and 1988, two hundred and thirteen Getz covers appeared, making Getz the most prolific New Yorker cover artist of the twentieth century. This exhibition features thirty of Getz’s original cover paintings, including some of the most memorable, such as “Art Class” from May 2, 1970 and “World Series at Pete’s” from Sept 28, 1956. The works on display cover the span of Getz’s work from the 1950’s through to his later work in the 1980’s.
We would like to thank the Getz family for the generous loan of these extraordinary works for our exhibition.
About the Artist:
Born in New Jersey, Getz attended Pratt Institute on a full scholarship, graduating with honors in 1934. He sold his first magazine cover illustration to American Childhood in October of 1934. Getz used the proceeds to move to New York City, selling his first ‘spot’ drawings to The New Yorker in 1936. In 1939, neighbor and fellow artist Philip Guston suggested that Getz apply for a W.P.A. mural contract, and over the next few years, Getz won four mural contracts through the W.P.A. program including the Post Office, Lancaster, New York in 1939; The World’s Fair Textile Building, from 1939-1940; Post Office, Bronson, Michigan, in 1941 and the Post Office, Luverne, Alabama in 1942.
After serving in the Philippines during World War II, Getz resumed his work as an artist, becoming a regular contributor to The New Yorker. Getz also continued to pursue fine art painting. In 1960 he was offered a one-man show at New York’s Babcock Gallery. The director requested that Getz exhibit his work under a different name, concerned that Getz’s association with “commercial” art would hinder his recognition as a painter. Getz chose to use his middle name, Kimmig, for his signature on his fine art work. Moses Soyer wrote the exhibit essay for Getz’s Babcock show.
In 1969 Getz moved to Sharon, Connecticut, which marked a shift in the mood of his New Yorker covers from the city-centered work of his past. He began to depict more rural scenes of the countryside, familiar to the growing commuter and weekender populations. In 1990, after fifty-four years of contributing to The New Yorker, Getz declared himself retired from the magazine, and devoted his energies to painting. Though a stroke rendered him blind in one eye, Getz continued to paint and draw until his death in 1996, at the age of 82.
Past Exhibit: OFF CAMPUS
Student Artwork from The Hotchkiss School
April 2 – May 30, 2018
Reception: Sunday, April 22, 1-3 PM
Our spring exhibit features images by over 30 student artists currently enrolled at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. These works represent a wide variety of subject matter and media, including digital photography, traditional photography, paintings in oil and acrylic, mixed media collage, assemblage, and drawings in graphite, charcoal, pastels and colored pencil.
Founded in 1891, The Hotchkiss School is a coeducational boarding school, located at 11 Interlaken Road in Lakeville, Connecticut. For more information on the arts and arts events at The Hotchkiss School visit http://www.hotchkiss.org/arts or call 860-435-4423.
Past Exhibit: YOGA: The Secret of Life - The Photographs of Francesco Mastalia
October 14-January 23
Following the resounding success of our 2014 exhibition Organic: Farmers & Chefs of The Hudson Valley, The Moviehouse Studio Gallery will feature the first public exhibition of a new collection of images from photographer Francesco Mastalia for Fall. This time the artist has turned his insightful lens towards yoga.
Mastalia’s eye was initially drawn to the form and artistry of yoga, but as he met his subjects and began to learn more about their personal practice and spiritual journey, the project began to move beyond physical postures and acquire deeper meaning. Yoga: The Secret of Life became much more than a photo-documentary about the spiritual and physical journey of yoga practice, the image collection explores understanding who we truly are, why we are here, and what our ultimate purpose is on this planet, delving deeply into the very purpose of our existence and how to live a happy and fulfilled life.
In silence, ask the questions. Who am I? Why am I here?
The portraits in the collection are strikingly strong, each of them possessing an ethereal, and deeply meditative quality. The complete body of work features 108 renowned yogis including Radhanath Swami, Sharon Gannon, David Life, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, Sri Dharma Mittra, Krishna Das, Tao-Porchon Lynch, Shiva Rea, Rod Stryker, Seane Corn and Rodney Yee, as well as many from our local region.
Sharon Gannon, David Life, and Shiv Mirabito – all of Woodstock, New York, Raghunath of Canaan, New York, Coby Kozlowski of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Justin Ram Das Logan of Red Hook, New York are all featured in this exhibit.
The images take on an extra dimension when viewed with their accompanying narratives which provide an intimate and enlightening account, in their own words, of each subject’s personal journey.
As in Mastalia’s previous work, the photographs are taken on glass plates using the wet collodion process, a photographic technique dating back to the 1850s. With the use of a large format wooden camera and antique brass lens, glass plates are hand coated to produce one of a kind ambrotype images. The collodion process transcends us to another place, another time. When light and chemistry collide, we enter a mysterious world where art and science meet and the alchemy reveals itself.
Francesco Mastalia has traveled the world photographing tribal, religious, spiritual, and indigenous people. His first book Dreads, published by Workman/ Artisan, is a photo documentary on the history of dreadlocks. The book is now in its eighth printing, and includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. His last book Organic: Farmers & Chefs of the Hudson Valley published by powerHouse Books, with a foreword by actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, is a photo documentary of the Hudson Valley’s organic sustainable food movement. Works from Organic are included in the Permanent Collection of the Library of Congress.
YOGA: The Secret of Life will be published by powerHouse Books on October 17, 2017. Advance copies will be available for purchase at the exhibition reception.
SAVE THE DATES!
Our MIND-BODY-SPIRIT Program Series is presented in conjunction with this exhibit.
Sunday, November 12 – 3 PM- 4:30 PM: YOGA: The Secret of Life – Panel Discussion
Francesco Mastalia talks about the making of YOGA and talks with subjects from the exhibit and book Justin Ram Das Logan and Gabriella DiGiovanni who will share insights into their practice and process.
Friday, November 17 – 7 PM: HEAL
Guided Meditation – Film – Panel Discussion
Led by Dr. Beth Gershuny & Practitioners from Izlind Wellness Center, Rhinebeck
Sunday, January 14 – 1 PM: YOGA: The Secret of Life – The Photographic Process – Lecture
Francesco Mastalia
Click here for a PDF of the MIND-BODY-SPIRIT Program Schedule.
Past Exhibit: Harper Blanchet: Abstract Paintings
June 29 – October 5, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 8, 4:30 – 6:30 pm
Harper Blanchet is a visual artist, painter, photographer and poet/writer who lives and works out of his studios in Falls Village, Connecticut and Phoenicia, New York. A native son, Harper grew up grew up in Sharon, Connecticut and studied art at Connecticut State College from 1966-1970. His work is all non-commercial fine art, and his photography is all on film – no digital. He began painting abstracts on canvas in 1980 while living in a tiny one-room cabin in rural Vermont.
His personal aesthetic is…“The branch of philosophy dealing with beauty in nature and art”, and he considers himself an Artist Aesthete…“One who cultivates a superior appreciation of the beautiful.”
Artist Statement
“The evolution of my abstract paintings began when I was born. Some important influences are my lifelong passion and involvement with photography, photographing, and the light. This includes composition, content, form, shape, space/spacing, the edge, line, light and shadow and objects in relationship to each other. Another giant influence on my art are doors and windows – passing from one space to another, either visually or physically, or both. Also, sitting in a chair and watching the light change (Cherry Hill Farm Studio, 2nd Floor – 1972). Also, watching the sky (clouds) and sunsets at Sunset Ridge on Silver Mountain and Winchell Mountain in Millerton, New York (1982-present). Also, living in a one room cabin in Vermont with a one hundred and eighty-degree vista of the crest line of the Green Mountains. Also, photographing the female form (figure studies). Also, house painting. And studying/enjoying the natural world. It’s all about the light. It’s all about the sun.”
Short Bio
In 1972 Blanchet moved to Cherry Hill Farm in West Cornwall, Connecticut and started photographing the sunsets from Silver Mountain in Millerton which he did through to the early nineties, including in his work, vistas of the Catskills shot from Winchell Mountain. He spent his summers at friend and fellow artist Elizabeth Kelly’s studio in Woodstock. In 1993 he moved to a new studio – The Tower House – on prospect Mountain Farm in Salisbury and was introduced to the New York Botanical Gardens where he began to photograph flowers. He continued to work out of a number of studios in the area – in Ancramdale and also Limerock – until the early 2000s when he moved into his Twilight Studios and Swift Gallery on Main Street in Millerton. Two big themes in Blanchet’s work are dance and motion and it was at this time – while photographing the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York City – that these themes were strongly reinforced. In 2009 Blanchet moved out of his space on Main Street to his current Phoenicia studio and another in Woodstock, and in 2014 moved from Woodstock into the current space – the Twilight Studios and Blue Star Gallery in Falls Village, Connecticut.
Harper rarely shows his work publicly, preferring to sell quietly to private buyers and collectors, so The Moviehouse feels very privileged to be able to showcase his extraordinary work this Summer.
Recent Solo Shows:
2000-2002 West Main Gallery, Lakeville, CT (3)
2003-2004 Manna Dew Cafe Gallery, Millerton, NY (2)
2005-2007 The Swift Gallery, Millerton, NY (3)
2008-2009 The Blue Star Gallery, Millerton, NY (2)
2010-2013 Arts Upstairs Gallery, Phoenicia, NY (4)
May/June 2017 Deborah Berke Gallery, 220 5th Avenue, New York, NY
Past Exhibit: The Hudson: City River-Rural Valley
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The Paintings of Basia Goldsmith & Ginny Howsam Friedman
February 25 – June 27
The exhibition features a selection of abstract works chosen for their depictions of the Hudson from both an urban and rural perspective.
The paintings Basia Goldsmith has chosen for this exhibition (shown in the first row above) speak to her relationship with the river and reflect it’s ever-changing urban persona.
“I look out of the window at the Hudson from our apartment. Some of this work reflects upon the juxtaposition of nature and city – the park, the river, the sky — the highway, the skyline, in all seasons. In contrast to the harmony and beauty of this, there are also other river paintings – embedded with images of women and children from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and America, struggling for freedom lives full of danger, now more than ever.”—-Basia Goldsmith
Ginny Howsam Friedman‘s work (second row above) is inspired by the rural Hudson Valley in all its natural glory, working to create a feeling on canvas and on paper that is a visceral reaction to nature.
“I take off from a memory and try to paint the sensation the image has on me. I make paintings with brushwork, oil sticks, dripping, scrapping, wiping and drawing on canvas. On paper I make prints then I paint, draw, scrape and sometimes cut them and put them together in a new order. Often messing up an image is an important part of the final result. A jumping-off point is the road I live on in upstate New York. The natural surroundings of trees, ponds, the Hudson River, mountain views, pastures and wild and cultivated flowers are a constant inspiration.”—-Ginny Howsam Friedman
About the Artists:
Basia Goldsmith was born in Poznan, Poland. As a child, she, her mother and siblings were sent to an internment camp in North Africa before being relocated to Scotland. At the age of 16, Basia attended London’s Central School of Art. After graduating, she became a textile designer in Paris, before moving to to New York in her 20’s. Goldsmith now devotes her time exclusively to painting.
Ginny Howsam Friedman grew up in up-Upstate New York—outside of Buffalo. She graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked in advertising in NYC for many years. She lives and works in the Bronx and Millerton and divides her time between painting and printmaking.
Past Exhibit: SHADOWS & LIGHT: Donald Bracken
October 22 – January 25, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
5-6pm: Artist Talk / 6-7pm Reception
Free of Charge – Open to the Public
Donald Bracken is a process-oriented artist. A native San Franciscan, he received his BFA from U.C. Berkeley, then moved East and and has lived in West Cornwall, Connecticut, for thirty six years.
His process includes the discovery of materials which he then synthesizes and formalizes in the studio. A significant portion of his work after 2002 referenced the World Trade Center and 9/11. Drawing heavily from both the physical landscape and the archeological traces of civilization, and he often combines materials such as clay and acrylics with local earth, natural pigments, vines, leaves, roots, and seed pods. He incorporates rich texture, evocative form, and elements of color, light, and kinetics in pieces that describe both life’s ephemeral transience and its constant evolution, as well as documenting the human capacity to cause decline, disorder, and chaos in the natural world.
Lake Reflection #2, 52’’x48”, Acrylic on Canvas.
As a young painter, William Turner’s later work was a strong influence. Over the years, Bracken has become ever more inspired by alternative materials and different ways of looking at nature, form, and structure, but his primary creative focus remains, essentially, drawing and painting, and nature his greatest visual and spiritual influence.
This exhibition will focus primarily on Bracken’s more recent work – acrylic paintings done over last few years that depict abstract worlds based on air, water, and earth, and the rhythms and motifs of the natural world. The pieces, in many cases, creates worlds unto themselves, into which the viewer is invited to enter and inhabit.
Thumbnails L to R: Nocturnal Lake, 68’’x62’’, Acrylic on Canvas; Donald Bracken; Frog Love #4 , 52’’x48”, Acrylic on Canvas
Past Exhibit: Twenty Five Years On: The Art of John D. Greene
We were privileged to host John Greene for an exhibition twenty-five years ago and are excited to bring him back to showcase his latest work. Many of the paintings are recent – done in the past year – and include a series of nail paintings which continue to intrigue and stimulate the artist. The idea for these pieces evolved when Greene’s local hardware store went out of business and he became the proud recipient of all their old rusty nails. Another group of work in the exhibition are the silver paintings, which the artist says – “…are always a challenge.” The show also includes pieces from Greene’s collection “Aerial” – a series of abstracts inspired by the view of the earth from above – as well as pieces from his “Landscape” and “Color Field” collections, and others.
ARTIST BIO
John Greene was born and raised in Manhattan, and attended Horace Mann and Brown University. He has been a resident of Pine Plains since the 1970’s. Greene always painted, and took courses at the New School while living and working in the City. He set up a studio in his Manhattan apartment, and juggled painting, family, and a career in Finance.
In 1987 John built a studio on the family’s Hudson Valley farm and started studying painting and sculpting full-time – taking courses at the Sculpture Center and the National Academy in New York City. His first two exhibitions were at the Stephen Haller Gallery in Manhattan and the Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, NY. Since that time he has exhibited both locally, regionally and around the country.
Working predominantly in encaustic, Greene continues to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques, from creating figurative sculptures from rusted steel wool, to utilizing materials such as copper, lead and rusted nails in both his paintings and his sculpture, and working with feathers found locally.
John serves on the Board of Managers of the Memorial Art Gallery, in Rochester, NY, and he and his wife Gwen raise and breed Angus cattle on their farm in Pine Plains.
“For me, painting is, in the end, about paint: color, texture, the joy of putting it on and scraping it off. I believe the results are best served by keen and repeated viewing. I try to introduce elements that are hidden or apparent, that will encourage “reading” the paintings many times and constantly discovering something new.” —-John D. Greene
ARTIST STATEMENT [Excerpt]
For me, painting is, in the end, about paint: color, texture, the joy of putting it on and scraping it off. I believe the results are best served by keen and repeated viewing. I try to introduce elements that are hidden or apparent, that will encourage “reading” the paintings many times and constantly discovering something new. My painting is primarily about surface, and surface in turn is about feeling – it can be ambivalent. It gives the illusion of depth and reflection, of time and memory and complexity. One crucial element of ALL my work is the texture of the paintings, the materials I employ and the feeling they create…
View/Download Full Statement & Resume
Past Exhibit: Nancy Lasar: INTERSECTIONS: Exploring Line & Form in Mixed Mediums
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Saturday, May 7 – July 20, 2016
Opening Reception & Gallery Talk: 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Admission to the opening reception and the exhibition is free and open to the public.
The Moviehouse Studio Gallery Spring exhibition features the work of Washington, CT-based artist Nancy Lasar, one of the premiere print makers in the area, who is renowned for pushing the traditional boundaries. The show includes images in monotype with chine collé, mixed-media and graphite drawings and prints on paper, as well as Cliché Verre photographs, and etchings. At the opening event gallery talk, Lasar will focus on the various processes she employs, and will emphasize how they can be combined, overlapped and re-purposed to create new images.
Lasar has exhibited her award-winning images widely throughout the U.S., and as far away as Sweden, Japan and Shanghai, China. She is an exhibiting artist at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Her work may be also be seen at Van Deb Editions, New York, The Silvermine Guild, New Canaan, Amy Simon Fine Art, Westport, CT and Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT.
Her works are included in many public and private collections including Pfizer Corp, Aetna Life and Casualty, The General Mills Corp., and the Rutger’s Print Archive. Nancy Lasar receives commissions to create unique pieces for private homes and offices in Connecticut, New York and Minneapolis. Lasar is the recipient of two Individual Artist Fellowships from the CT. Commission on the Arts and has had a grant to study at the Vermont Studio Center.
“Whether in drawing, painting, or printmaking, the process for me is about layering and energizing space in such a way that objects are fluid, interconnected and full of energy and movement. I try to utilize a variety of lines, marks and media to suggest both stasis and openness to possibility and transformation as well as the passage of time. As I attempt to describe the multiple realities which intermingle in memory, imagination and daily life, images emerge and diverge – reconfiguring in new relationships.”—-Nancy Lasar
Thumbnails Left to Right: Frost & Fuschia 1 (2009), Framed 37 × 51, Monotype; Music in the Air with Red (2006) Framed 30 × 23, Soft Ground Color Etching; Phoebe’s Flowers (2009), Framed 31 × 22, Cliché Verre Photograph
Past Exhibit: The Art of Alexander Shundi
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The Moviehouse Studio Gallery is proud to announce the opening of its winter exhibition featuring the paintings, poetry and collages of artist Alexander Shundi.
January 16 – April 20, 2016
The collages and poems are conceived to explore a synergy between expression in spoken-written language, and reactions to visual images. It is all an illusion, primarily. But what follows is of interest: one may serve as a key to decipher the other, and vice versa. The pieces are conceived primarily as illustration in its purity of meaning: to shed light on a thought concept. Both the discipline of vision and of the written poem, have much in common in the formal means of expression, as in their requirement for balance, mystery, rhythm, atmosphere, and harmony.
ARTIST BIO
Born Alexander Bocchialini Shundi in Correggio, Italy, Shundi lived in Parma until his family moved to the U.S. in 1957. He obtained a BFA and MFA from Yale University, and went on to study at many prestigious institutions including Brera Academy in Milan and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. His talent and unique approach have led to distinguished teaching positions at Silvermine College of Art in New Canaan, CT, and State University of New York (SUNY Purchase). Shundi also founded and ran the Santa Fe International Academy of Art in New Mexico where he taught painting, figure, landscape, drawing and art history, and has served as Dean of the Silvermine-La Coste school of Art in La Coste, Provence, France, and the Artsworks Forum School, in Millerton, NY. He is currently professor of Art History and Drawing at the New York Institute of Technology in Manhattan, and conducts intensive advanced painting classes in his studio-residence, a converted 1852 church in Amenia, New York. Alex also teaches advanced painting for the Arts on the Lake, Lake Carmel, NY, in addition to a full lecturing schedule, and has exhibited both nationally and internationally throughout his career.
ARTIST STATEMENT
SELECT RESUME
WRITTEN WORD & PAINTED IMAGE
More information on the poetry and collage collection.
Past Exhibit: Jeffrey L. Neumann: “Vanishing America” - Closes Saturday, Jan 9
VANISHING AMERICA
A solo exhibition of oil and watercolor paintings by artist Jeffrey L. Neumann.
October 10, 2015 – January 9, 2016
Jeffrey L. Neumann was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1953, and currently maintains his studio in Hillsdale, NY. He is known for paintings that preserve an American landscape which is rapidly disappearing. His realistically rendered images not only evoke a strong sense of place, but also a particular time in the history of this country.
Artist Statement
“My aim is to create deeply personal work that speaks about the soul of America. Throughout my life I have spent a great deal of time on the road. My art is a distillation of that experience through the filter of my memory, my imagination, and my hand. Although there is an aspect of cultural anthropology in my work, I have to experience a profound personal connection with my subject. That connection can be as intrinsic as a part of my personal history or it can be an emotional response to a particular scene. This emotional response is what I try to convey through my paintings. I’m seeking to evoke a certain mood through the limitations of paint and my style of realism. Although I’m interested in the craft of painting and I try to create well-executed art, my paintings are not just about painting. They are also very much about the subject. Not a literal representation, but one that contains a feeling that comes from the heart.”—-Jeffrey L. Neumann
“Neumann explores the profound meaning one may find in overlooked places. Neumann’s paintings reflect the artist’s ongoing commitment to documenting the disappearing commercial landscape that defined much of the 20th century. The protagonists in these works are the out of the way motels, quirky storefronts, and antiquated theaters that dot the landscape in small town America. For Neumann, the act of painting serves to preserve unique aspects of American cultural history while reflecting on the spirit that lives on in our built environment. “—- Jeffrey Carlson, Fine Art Today.
Admission is free. Movie tickets are not required to view the gallery which remains open during theater opening hours.
Past Exhibit: Diane Love: Explorations in Art
The M Studio Gallery’s summer exhibition features a survey of the work of creative polymath, artist Diane Love. Each group of works in the exhibition has a thread that Diane feels represents the continuum in her aesthetic sensibility. And while the medium and subjects vary this through line is evident from her earliest canvases to her current photographic work. It is her belief that all artists have their own particular vocabulary of color, form and arrangement which are always evident. She will be giving gallery talks to explain the threads that connect her work [dates to be announced].
This exhibition presents a unique opportunity to see, first-hand, the creative progression of Love’s work, from oils and watercolors to photography, over the course of her career to date. Each group of works in the exhibition has a distinct individual sensibility that reflects Love’s creative direction at the time, yet when viewed as a body of work, the groups relate to one another, and communicate the artist’s overarching personal aesthetic.
Love believes that the principles of balance, unity, harmony and truthfulness govern all successful artistic work. Her work as a designer and artist provided the yeast for her book Yes/No Design (Rizzoli, 2000). In the book Diane reveals that when she looks at objects she finds they break down into four categories form, texture, color, and pattern.
“I am personally attracted to objects where the form of the object is the most compelling feature.” Love says. “For some people it is the color or the texture.This is purely subjective- there is no right or wrong.”
This way of looking at objects is reflected throughout Diane Love’s work. Her early floral and figurative paintings have been deconstructed and sometimes abstracted in her later work. Her landscapes evoke a feeling reminiscent of the American landscape painters of the early ‘20’s and ‘30’s but with a heightened color palette. This exploration of the very essence of an image is carried through Love’s photographic works as well. In her latest photographic series Intersections (Place de la Republique & Specter Under Bethesda for example), she explores the connection between two different images and layers them to create an intersection that is visually harmonious and topically relevant.
Diane Love is a nationally acclaimed designer of jewelry, home fragrance, decorative accessories for the home, author of Yes/No Design, Flowers are Fabulous, painter, photographer, actor and playwright.
Love started in business as a dealer in English, American and Japanese antiques. She has a depth of knowledge in this area and coming from her studies as an art historian she is well acquainted with the history of the decorative arts. But before long she felt the need to personalize her shop and so introduced silk flowers of her own design. She quickly became known as the originator of a new look in “faux flowers”. She developed her own style of flower arranging which she explains in Flowers are Fabulous for Decorating. After establishing herself as an expert in the arrangement of artificial flowers she was commissioned to create arrangements for many prestigious institutions. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York City Opera, The Frick Museum, The East Side Antiques Show, Estee Lauder, Revlon, the American Embassy in Moscow and the King of Morocco all had her flower arrangements on display.
Using her Madison Avenue shop as a model she created Diane Love Boutiques in department stores. Bloomingdale’s, Burdines and Bullocks all had Diane Love boutiques. The way she presented her merchandise was very distinctive and her Madison Avenue shop was known for its imaginative displays that combined fashion and home design products. Love says her shop displays were the precursors of the collages she now makes out of paper, several of which can be seen in The Moviehouse exhibition.
“There are many similarities between designing objects, arranging objects and creating objects in a painting. My shop was my canvas. Every day I rearranged the merchandise creating new ways of looking at the things I was selling.”—-Diane Love
Past Exhibit: Speaking to Nature: The Sculpture of Henry Klimowicz
April 11 – July 9, 2015
A resident of Millerton, NY and graduate of the Skowhegan School of Art, Klimowicz earned his Bachelors in Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He has been a colonist at Millay, Yaddo, McDowell, Ucross Foundation, and The Vermont Studio Center.
In 1986, living in Brooklyn, NY in a limited space that provided him very little room for tools and traditional materials, Klimowicz was forced to think creatively about ways he could continue to sculpt given these physical constraints. It was then he decided to work in corrugated cardboard, a readily available medium that worked perfectly for his situation.
Klimowicz feels that, “…as a medium, cardboard comes with no value and therefore can become whatever I decide to make it.” He considers the creation of his pieces a little akin to “…long term drawings…that work out over the surface of a piece.” He starts small, often with no clear indication of where a piece is taking him, letting it work itself out, without consciously thinking where a piece is going or if it’s going well. The medium is the driver, with Klimowicz making aesthetic decisions along the way.
Klimowicz’s early work clearly reflects a strong relationship with nature, and these naturalistic themes continue to be very apparent in his non-representational work which began to emerge in 2007. Often resembling organic creations, the artist constructs the works piece by piece, rather like a bee building a hive.
The results, that vary in scale from small and intimate to extremely large installations, are fascinating, three-dimensional pieces of work that attract the viewer with their beauty and intricacy. Paradoxically, as wonderfully unique each piece is, Klimowicz has observed that cardboard is such a commonplace material that viewers are very clearly familiar with it and can easily relate to it, which, in turn, affects how they enter the work.
For the past three years, Klimowicz has run The Re Institute, a 2000 square foot exhibition space situated in the hay loft of a 1960’s barn on a forty acre working farm, located at the intersection of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, at 1395 Boston Corners Rd, Millerton. The Re Institute hosts an annual series of small group shows, seasonally from May through October, and brings together visual artists, filmmakers, writers, composers, dancers, and outdoor installation artists. The goal of the Re Institute is to allow artists to observe their work in a new context, and to promote and enrich new perspectives, understandings, and insights in the arts within this unique and historical rural landscape.
Artist’s Statement:
“Cardboard is simple and straightforward. It is also a severely limited material. It has an ever-present cultural bias related to its past uses as a container or its present use as waste. I love it when the material transcends its cultural confines. If I can make something beautiful from cardboard, I have then said that anything can be made valuable, fruitful, or hopeful. I see this work as very positive because of the lengths that have been traveled by the material from trash to beauty. It is a statement about the possible—that all things can be redeemed, often for more than what was deposited. Creativity can be that redeemer.” —-Henry Klimowicz
Past Exhibit: RESONANCE: The Paintings & Drawings of Elizabeth Seewald Hill
“Resonance” exhibits the works of Elizabeth Hill, who, by being encouraged and inspired by artists and musicians in her family, explores and celebrates those connections in drawings and paintings. In composing expressive elements offered by the two disciplines, Elizabeth addresses spatial ambiguities and emotional sensations by organizing and composing the formal functions of light, line, shape and form. In her interest and wonder in traveling, Elizabeth further finds great inspiration in the visual resonance of landscape. In her most recent work, she extends her search by incorporating her visions with the musical discipline of the piano.
Elizabeth Hill was born in New York City in 1964. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase and MFA from Bard College. She also studied visual art and music at Bennington College, with additional training at Wooster Community Art Center in Danbury, Connecticut and The Art Student’s League in New York. She has taught painting and drawing at Wooster Community Art Center, New Milford Public Schools, Arts on the Lake, Village Center for the Arts and privately in her studio. She was also the arts coordinator for Peace Pals at the World Peace Prayer Society in Amenia, New York, the administrative director at the Santa Fe International Academy of Art and was the owner and director of SUTA Gallery, specializing in Native American art and artifacts.
Seewald Hill’s impressive resume includes exhibitions at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, VT, Katonah Museum of Art, NY and Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY among many others. See Full Resume
“Exploring the transient, emotive response to music and the landscape of the piano soundboard has increasingly influenced my work. In these paintings and charcoal drawings, I focus on finding a commonality in the compositional elements of two expressive disciplines.”—-Elizabeth Seewald Hill
Past Exhibit: RECONSTRUCTING MEMORY: The Paintings of Patty Mullins
August – December 2014
Born in Manhattan, Mullins moved to Connecticut at the age of two. Her late father was the noted illustrator Frank Mullins, her mother Marilyn is a musician. Patty obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from SUNY Purchase, and completed graduate work at the New York Academy of Fine Arts.
Mullins’ work has been exhibited locally throughout New England, as well as in New York and Philadelphia, and has been shown at the National Academy Museum. Notable collectors of her work include Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, Bianca Jagger, Campbell Scott, and Jamie Wyeth. She recently received a grant from the Martha Boschen Porter Fund, a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Mullins’ portfolio contains figures, landscapes (including swamps and wetlands), pools, interiors, still life and portraits. She paints in both oil and acrylic.
Her paintings, particularly the landscapes and earlier figurative work, are all deeply evocative. They convey not only an image to the viewer but also a sense of time and place, and the feelings associated with them. She says of them, “My feelings are rooted in memory; I’ll be moved by a certain light, like the milky sunlight at a particular time of year, and remember the dust on a windowsill in a back hallway when I was a child, and the feelings that come up are overwhelming – so I try to paint that, or to find visual equivalence for the feelings, to make a picture that evokes those feelings in me, and possibly – hopefully – conveys something of that to the viewer.”
Past Exhibit: ORGANIC: Farmers & Chefs of the Hudson Valley
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF FRANCESCO MASTALIA
April 2014 – July 2014
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“ORGANIC” is not just about growing and producing food, it is about the life of the planet. It is about preserving an agricultural tradition that will safeguard farmland for future generations.
FRANCESCO MASTALIA has traveled the world photographing tribal, religious, spiritual, and indigenous people. His book DREADS, published by Workman Artisan, is a photo documentary on the history of dreadlocks, that Mastalia traveled to Ethiopia, Kenya, Angola, Namibia, Senegal, India, Japan, New Zealand, Jamaica, and throughout the United States to create. DREADS is now in its eighth printing, it is published worldwide in four languages, and includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. To create the images for ORGANIC, Mastalia embarked upon a 17,000-mile journey through the Hudson Valley, and photographed over 100 of its farmers and chefs. The exhibition includes 36 of these images along with a personal narrative by each subject, including eight farmers and chefs from the Millerton area who were part of this endeavor.
The Hudson Valley has become an epicenter for the local, organic, sustainable food movement. With its rich agricultural land, awareness for sustainable living, and the growing demand for local, organic food, the ‘locavore’ farm-to-table movement has become a way of life here. This exhibition spotlights the Hudson Valley as a region at the forefront of this movement. It features the dedicated farmers who are committed to growing and producing food using sustainable methods, and the chefs who echo their beliefs and pay homage to the food they produce.
“Organic” is one of the most misunderstood and often misused words describing food today. In narrating their stories, the farmers and chefs featured in Mastalia’s photographs share their philosophy about what it means to grow and live organically and sustainably.
Image: Brother Victor
The photographs in this collection were taken using the wet plate collodion process, a technique developed in the mid-19th century, when the art of photography was in its infancy. Invented in 1851, the wet collodion photographic process produces a glass negative and a beautifully detailed print. The method thrived from the 1850s until about 1880. Much as the amber toned images recall the early photographer exploring and cultivating his art, so too do these images remind us of a time when the cultivation of land was a manual process linking the farmer directly to the soil.
ORGANIC Farmers & Chefs of the Hudson Valley is being published by powerHouse Books, a leading publisher of high quality art and documentary photography books. It will be published as a 224 page hardcover book, and is scheduled for release in September 2014.
The Moviehouse is a planning to present a number of public lectures/discussions in conjunction with this exhibition, to take place in May & June 2014. Details will be announced shortly.
Past Exhibit: ICONS AND LANDSCAPES: Eternal Light, Hudson Light
ARTIST INFORMATION
“Martha Zimiles’s 12 small icons, painted—or “written,” as is properly said—are truly exquisite renditions of this ancient religious art form, which goes back to the Byzantine era.” —-The Millbrook Independent
Artist Martha Zimiles has been studying the art of Iconography for a number of years. It is a rare opportunity to see an art form that is ancient, unfamiliar and otherworldly.
Initially there does not appear to be anything in common between the works of Millerton artists, Martha and Murray Zimiles, on exhibit at The Moviehouse Gallery through January 30, 2014.
Martha’s 12 Russian icons, painted with traditional egg tempera paints and gilded with 24K gold backgrounds or halos, and Murray’s hand colored prints primarily of landscapes; small in size but vast in space and vision adorn the walls. They share a refined sense of color and a high level of skill in execution but otherwise seem worlds apart. Looking deeper one sees that they share an approach that seeks to reveal something transcendent, especially through the way light is used.
Murray Zimiles is a Distinguished Professor of studio art at SUNY, Purchase College. His work has been widely exhibited around the world and is found in many important collections. His work is full of the revelatory effects of light, the feeling of a reality beyond what is clearly seen or depicted, a reaching for the sublime.
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“Murray Zimiles’ landscape paintings…appear to exist outside time and place, a metaphysical space cloistered within a mythology of rolling fields, roaming animals and a fractured, pulsing light.” -Art historian Andre` van der Wende in an article in “Artscope”, New England’s premier culture magazine, Summer 2013.
Past Exhibit: Poesis and the Elements of Design - The Art of Robert Bristow and Pilar Proffitt
Widely published designers Pilar Proffitt and Robert Bristow of Poesis Design have assembled new and previously un-exhibited artwork made in the spirit of their thoughtful and elegant architectural projects.
In this exhibit, the basis for their forthcoming monograph, the pair explores the fundamental underpinnings of all of their design work: Be it a building, an interior, a piece of furniture, or even a spoon, the same rules apply, the same concerns arise, the same means of expression deliver timeless solutions.
The Poesis vision sees the way forward as the reduction of objects and places to their essential being, and letting that simplicity emerge clearly and quietly in a meaningful tactile form. For them, architecture includes the entire built environment, from buildings, to interiors, to furnishings, to even objects. It all should have the same thoughtful approach and considered expression. Beyond styles, beyond trend, the Poesis vision explores the tactile and visual presence and meaning of architecture, and reveals how design can ground us in our place and time.
Pilar Proffitt and Robert Bristow use their “whole house concept,” to successfully design their ideal Litchfield County home. The couple sticks to keeping the essence and soul of what their creating alive, but still having a fun and interesting concept.” Cottages-Gardens.com
Making a Prefab Home Their Own…. Robert & Pilar Featured in The New York Times
Past Exhibit: Summertime
Summertime features works by Don Perdue; a nationally honored photographer, with works in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, Ann Getsinger;whose oil paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries and hang in hundreds of homes. Patricia Beard; the author of nine nonfiction books and hundreds of nationally published magazine articles as well as water color artist, Mita Corsini Bland whose work appears in Sister Parish Design, David Braga; water color artist George Shattuck; represented by The Iris Gallery of Fine Art Photography; Boston, MA and Aspen, CO, Jessica Tcherepnine;represented in collections internationally, including those at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, in Pittsburgh; the British Museum (Natural History), Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library, Shirley Sherwood Collection, in London; and the Benois Family Museum, Peterhof, St. Petersburg, Russia., Susan Rand; fine art painter who has held exhibitions throughout the East Coast, and Leslie Anderson; fine art painter based in Sedgwick, Maine
Past Exhibit: Observing the Observer
On August 17, 2012, The Moviehouse Gallery will open an exhibition of art by Diane Love to run through November 1, 2012.
Observing the Observer includes Love’s candid photographs from her series: Observing the Observer, and also a series of her one of a kind printed paintings, or “monoprints”.
Observing the Observer, according to Love, “is my voyeur’s view of people immersed in the world of art.”
Using black and white film, printed on canvas and stretched like a painting on wood stretchers, Observing the Observer incorporates Diane’s interest in both photography and painting. The photographs are bordered with black as if lifted from a contact sheet, numbers and all. With film fast vanishing Diane pays homage to the medium of film.
Love photographed the series in museums in Europe and the United States. Looking in the Rain was taken at the Fondation Maeght in France. On the Bench, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These limited edition photographs range in size from 40 × 30 up to 72 × 60 inches.
Past Exhibit: Susan Dorazio: ‘Horses in Motion’
Susan Dorazio is a versatile artist, accomplished in the use of oils, watercolor and pen and ink. All of the paintings selected, in watercolor or oil, depict horses in various forms of action, including racing, jumping, driving, and dressage. Her work is praised for its blending of light and color and for capturing the spirit of the moment.
Susan has gained International Acclaim for her ability to capture the spirit, energy and personality of her subjects. Whether depicting racehorses thundering toward the finish line, foxhounds leading the hunt or portraying a favorite pet, she seeks the unique qualities of each subject.
Many requests for her talents as a portrait painter are in competition with the demand for her paintings of equine and sporting events as well as New England landscapes. She has been Published in the Equine Journal, Saddle & Bridle, Draft Horse Journal, Chronicle of the Horse, and with Macmillan Publishing in New York, just to name a few.
Ms. Dorazio’s work can be viewed during regular theater hours through August 15, 2012.
“I have always loved drawing and painting from an early age on. It is my obsession.” – Susan Dorazio
“Everyone with an interest in country life and pursuits should have one of her paintings in his or her collection.” -Sarah Luke, Millbrook, NY,
“She has won a loyal and enthusiastic following of collectors who treasure her works for their deftness of line, blending of light and colors, and soft appealing rendition of the beauty of the standardbred horse and authentic settings of the race track. Her mastery of the watercolor medium is impressive…”-Stan Bergstein, Executive Vice President, Harness Tracks of America
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Past Exhibit: The Freewheelin Bob Dylan
Come see our Current Exhibit: ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ photographs by: Don Hunstein
The exhibit, which has recently completed a successful run in London, is a photographic portrait of the legendary rock icon by Columbia Records photographer and Sharon resident Don Hunstein.
Mr. Hunstein worked closely with Bob Dylan in the early 1960s when his star was on the rise and who now is considered to be one of the most influential figures of the 20th century; the photographs are an intimate and touching body of work. Included in the exhibit is the legendary 1963 album cover image,‘The Freewheelin’ , which brought Dylan international fame and launched his career.
The exhibition includes images of Dylan recording ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ which is considered to be the best and most important of his albums including the tracks ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Desolation Row’ as well as images of Dylan rehearsing for concerts and in repose. Hunstein’s images capture the young Dylan and his intrepid spirit of counter-culture which resonated the world over.
Past Exhibit: All About Earnest
Past Exhibit: tweet mother of mary what have we wrought
Artist Reception Saturday, May 28th, 5:00 to 7:00 PM
Peter J. Ketchum’s work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute, The Norfolk History Museum and Colby College. Five works were included in “35 Artists of North America,” curated by Thomas Krens, the former head of the Guggenheim. It has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, The Bushnell, The Springfield Museum of Fine Art, The Discovery Museum, and the former Guggenheim SOHO. The artist has shown in solo and group shows in Boston and New York, including TNC Gallery, Exit Art, Lumina, MetroPictures, SOHO 20, HERE, the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) Art Center, Bachelier/Cardonsky, Moviehouse Studio Gallery (almost home base!) and the Charter Oak Cultural Center. He was selected a Saatchi (London) Online TOP 10 Artist and was a finalist in Artslant’s Artist of the Month.
Peter Ketchum’s greeting cards are sold worldwide by Artists to Watch. Ketchum is the curator of the TNC Gallery, one of the oldest and largest alternative galleries in New York City.
Peter J. Ketchum lives in Norfolk, CT with wife Robin, a platoon of mice, and the ghost of Eden Riggs.
Past Exhibit: Robert F. Haiko A PhotoGraphic Exhibition
Robert Haiko is the Senior Faculty Member at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut where he is chairman and founder of the Photography and Film Department and co-director of the Tremaine Gallery. He was a guest teaching fellow at Yale University and taught courses at the University of Hartford Art School in the 1970’s.
Mr. Haiko has a BFA from Boston University, did graduate work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been exhibited widely including exhibits at The New Britain Museum of American Art, The Lyman Allyn Museum in New London, the Midtown-Y Gallery in New York, Boston University and Yale University. He received grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and was a MacDowell Colony fellow.
Mr. Haiko’s photographic work is represented in the collections of several museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester; the Polaroid Collection; the Minor White Archive at Princeton University; and the Paul Strand Archive at Aperture.
Past Exhibit: Joel Schapira: planes and other flights of fancy
Joel Schapira
Nearly twenty years ago, the artist took a course called Painting from the Inside Out from Rosemary Starace. For five years, he studied with Rosemary who later became his student for a short while—-life is grand, that way. During those years, he was mentored by her teacher, Chuck Morey. The artist then studied with Margot Trout for a few years and learned mostly to see. He also learned to work big like his hero, Gulley Jimson, the painter in The Horse’s Mouth by James Cary. From Peter London, the artist has lately learned to draw closer to his own nature.
The artist had a studio in Millerton, N.Y. from 1997 to 2003, where he painted large in a large space. He has since gone home, where in more intimate surroundings, he has been exploring the small space that no longer confines. Now 63, this Lakeville, Ct. resident and father of three, welcomes the opportunity to share with his neighbors, the work he is doing.
In 2004, the artist helped invent the artgarage, an after school drop in open studio for students at Housatonic Valley Regional High. One of his greatest pleasures is helping out there.
Past Exhibit: Christopher Pouler
Christopher Pouler
Drawings & Paintings
Christopher Pouler has been living and working in Lakeville, Connecticut for the past 10 years where he splits his time between his art and designing sets for the broadcast industry.
He works in oil paints, pencil and oil pastels. These works explore the human condition and how we each attempt to find meaning and connection in the joys, struggles and suffering that we and others encounter in this increasingly complex world.
Past Exhibit: IMMERSION
“IMMERSION”
An Exhibit of Landscape Paintings by
Hudson Valley Artist Dean Nicyper
Exhibit runs to April 8, 2010
Mr. Nicyper studied art at Marlboro College in Vermont and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He played jazz saxophone professionally for nearly ten years and now, in addition to his creative art work, is a practicing lawyer focusing extensively in the area of art law.
His paintings reflect the open airiness of the world out of doors, including large broad-view landscapes and wildlife subjects, revealing a his own vision of the natural world in a style derived in part from plein air techniques.
“I also endeavor to give the viewer a sense of the place depicted so that the image reflects the aura of the place rather than a literal depiction of it. Simultaneously, I strive to allow unreal and often fantastical elements to reveal themselves differently to, and be interpreted differently by, different viewers. My hope is that when a viewer concentrates on a painting for a minute, the viewer can become immersed in both the reality of the place and the viewer’s own perception of the place beyond its physical elements”.
Color, light and atmosphere dominate his work, many of his landscape subjects are areas around the Hudson Valley near his New York home. “Often it is the light on or behind an object that visually transforms the object’s character and significance, enabling a viewer to see and sense something more than the object itself”.
His work has been exhibited in New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
The Moviehouse exhibit can be viewed anytime during theater operating hours until April 8, 2010.
Past Exhibit: Diane Love
Past Exhibit: Michael Mark
Wax Work
PRESS RELEASE
Opening at the Moviehouse Gallery on December 17th and running until Februrary 24th is a show of new encaustic paintings by Michael Mark.
Encaustic paint involves the mixture of pigment, wax and occasionally resins or oils. These elements are melted, applied and manipulated in a warmed liquid state by a variety of different tools. After the paintings are complete, the entire surface is heated until the components of the painting fuse together forming a solid surface. Although Egyptians and Greeks used this cumbersome technique in a spectacular manner, it has fallen out of fashion for many centuries. Various devices of the 20th, such as the heat gun and electric frying pans, have made working in this medium easier.
Recently, Michael has focused on the deliberate act of making signs or symbols. These take the form of light and orbs, indicative of our transient existence, here today and perhaps gone tomorrow. He exposes the beauty of a single smudge or stroke in these unusual constructed paintings. The Romantic tradition of Turner’s combustions, Monet’s lilies and Albert Pinkham Ryder’s skies come to mind when viewing this work
Michael maintains studios in Millerton, NY and Melbourne, Australia – where he is studying for a PhD in Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts. Michael’s research involves the location, acquisition, refinement and ultimately painting with, earth pigments. His most recent show (pictured below) consisted of work painted on linen using gloved hands.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Text from Albert Pinkham Ryder
1848 – 1917
Painter
American
Try as I would, my colors were not those of nature. My leaves were infinitely below the standard of a leaf, my finest strokes were coarse and crude.
The old scene presented itself one day before my eyes framed in an opening between two trees. It stood out like a painted canvas-the deep blue of a midday sky-a solitary tree, brilliant with the green of early summer, a foundation of brown earth and gnarled roots.
There was no detail to vex the eye. Three solid masses of form and color-sky, foliage and earth-the world bathed in an atmosphere of golden luminosity. I threw my brushes aside;they were to small for the work in hand. I squeezed out big chunks of pure, moist color and taking my palette knife, I laid on blue, green, white and brown in sweeping strokes.
As I worked I saw that it was good and clean and strong. I saw nature springing into life upon my dead canvas. It was better than nature, for it was vibrating with the thrill of a new creation. Exultantly I painted until the sun sank below the horizon, then I raced around the fields like a colt let loose, and literally bellowed for joy.Albert Pinkam Ryder.
Past Exhibit: Danielle Mailer
An Exhibit of paintings, collage and acrylic mixed media on canvas, entitled “Body Language”, A Celebration of the Female Form by Danielle Mailer is featured at The Moviehouse Studio Gallery In Millerton, NY, through July 14, 2005.
The artwork conjures up her Latin-Jewish background in all of its vibrancy and color. The paintings, designating the female as cat, as Goddess, hidden away or center stage, all reflect an intimate landscape. A woman’s landscape that promises a Surrealistic terrain of cornucopia, chile peppers, trombones and skulls. A tapestry weave that incorporates personal symbols and narratives dealing with contemporary issues of womanhood, and in a larger scope, issues of modern day society.
Mailer, a teacher at Indian Mountain School, counts Matisse, Kahlo, Chagall, Nolde and Klimt among her influences. She also credits her parents, Peruvian painter Adele Morales, writer Norman Mailer, and jazz musician Peter McEachern as powerful sources of inspiration.
Over the last twelve years Mailer has shown her work in numerous galleries in Connecticut and beyond. Her exhibitions include both group and one woman shows at: Beaux Arts Gallery, Woodbury CT., Bachelor Cardinsky Gallery, Kent CT., The Silo, Washington CT., The Washington Art Association, Washington CT., Ellen Harris Gallery (Provincetown, Ma.), Signatures Gallery, Boston, MA., The Wisdom House, Litchfield CT., and New Arts Gallery, Litchfield, CT. Recently Mailer was invited to showcase her work in a group show in Chelsea, NYC., at the Blue Mountain Gallery. She also last year opened her own gallery in Goshen CT., Danielle Mailer Gallery, where she has an ongoing exhibit of her current work. As former associate art director of Artnews, she has also worked as a graphic designer, and recently sold a painting to Random House Books’ to be used for the cover art of the book titled “The Heart of a Family”.
Her work is collected by the Rockefeller Foundation and also by the renowned movie director, Milos Forman. She lives in CT. with her partner musician Peter McEachern and their three children.
Past Exhibit: Arthur Kvarnstrom
Past Exhibit: F. Pieter Lefferts
Sudden Skies’, presents a series of pastel paintings depicting the changing celestial light of the sky and its relationship to the landscape. Pieter says, “I paint to explore the vibrant patterns and elemental moods of nature. I’m driven to give expression to my experience of this life around me, wherever I am. I find my greatest inspiration in the sublimity of the Adirondacks, and in the beauty of the Hudson Valley and Northwest Hills that make the stage for daily life.”
The Artist trained at the Art Students League of New York in the academic style of the Boston School, the American descendant of French and English traditions. Pieter says, “I’m grateful to have had grounding in traditional techniques. It is the departure point for exploration and improvisation with my expression. It’s parallel to the music I play. There is form, yet part of the joy is being able to take a theme and extend it beyond its typical boundaries. I accomplish that with color. With this show I’ve kept most of my rendering apparent while using color to generate a sense of the marvelous in everyday.”
During the 1990’s Pieter traveled the world as Tour Manager for the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, providing him with encounters with legends of jazz and blues, while seeing first-hand the cultural treasures of Japan and Europe. “Having grown up in a musical family it’s natural for me to bridge the relationship between music and art. They share the same language, the language of color. When I play music I am intensely involved with sonic color, as such, when I paint I am building on lyrical qualities in my visual compositions.”
Pieter is an award winning artist, muralist and art educator and has exhibited throughout the region at galleries including Ruth and Skitch Henderson’s Silo Gallery in New Milford, CT. His Adirondack themed art was chosen for the 2000 Winter Goodwill games at the Olympic Museum in Lake Placid, NY, followed by an Adirondack Art Fund grant for artistic excellence. He has received grants from the Seherr-Thoss Foundation in Litchfield, CT and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts for his work as a muralist, guiding students in mural making, for which he received the Friend of Education Award by the Connecticut Region One School Board. Today Pieter teaches drawing and painting at the Farmington Valley Art Center in Avon, CT and I.S.183, The Art School for the Berkshires, in Stockbridge, MA. His educational programs and residencies include the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, where his summer workshops take advantage of the museum’s gardens and world-class collection of Impressionist masterpieces.
There will be an opening reception for the artist on Sunday, April 30, from 11:00AM to 1:00PM, to which the public is invited. Mr. Leffert’s artwork can be viewed at The Moviehouse Studio Gallery, 48 Main Street, Millerton, New York, during regular theater hours now through June 15, 2006.
