Martha Armstrong
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 10 - 5 pm
127 S 16th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
215 - 665 - 8138
Receptions & Meet the Artists: Saturday, June 3, 1 - 4 pm
Triton - Shape Of Water, 24″ x 22″, Oil On Linen
Bruce Pollock: Nature
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition with Philadelphia-based artist Bruce Pollock, whose paintings of forms found in nature add to the ongoing tradition of landscape painting at the gallery. The exhibition, titled Nature, features three distinct areas of Pollock’s practice, namely his Ciphers, Plant and Planet, as well as Fractal Forest series. Each focuses on recurring patterns and perpetual sequences observed in the natural world. These phenomena are of significant mathematical and scientific interest, and also create the structure of Pollock’s painted form. There is an appreciation for the micro and the macro, the near and far, and the ephemeral and the infinite.
Unlike the traditional landscape format, Pollock’s paintings are oriented vertically. Instead of a horizontal vista that favors ground or sky, Pollock’s works are often symmetrically bifurcated by a strong central plant-like form in his Plant And Planet compositions. There is a sense of viewing the plant forms on a Z-axis, or rather over time intervals as opposed to a singular moment in nature being recorded. His saturated colors and bright schemas are at times more symbolic than literal.
Kirk Maynard, Periphery Series 2, 25″ x 19″, Oil Pastel On Paper
The Portrait of the Artist… And Other Things™
Curated by Maida R. Milone
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to host The Portrait of the Artist… And Other Things™, curated by local art consultant and former CEO of The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), Maida R. Milone. This sixteen-artist exhibition features works by Gross McCleaf artists, Christine Lafuente and James Stewart, as well as other artists, many with strong ties to Philadelphia and past group exhibitions with the gallery – Katie Baldwin, Jill Bell, Donald E. Camp, Vincent Desiderio, Marguerita Hagan, Darla Jackson, Robert Jackson, John Karpinski, Alex Kanevsky, Chelsey Luster, Kirk Maynard, Lydia Panas, Hiro Sakaguchi and Ron Tarver.
Curator Maida R. Milone organized the exhibition and selected the artists. She writes, “I spend much of my free time in art museums and art galleries wherever I go. I find looking at art, being literally surrounded by art, the calmest and yet most stimulating experience, and one of the most hopeful, too, that a person can have in this chaotic, often frightening world.
Douglas Martenson, Diagonal Light, 16″ x 12″, Oil On Wood
Bonus Edit
Selected by Maida R. Milone
Alongside her curatorial project, The Portrait of the Artist… And Other Things™, Maida R. Milone selected a small grouping of works by represented GMG artists for Bonus Edit, including Christine Lafuente, Douglas Martenson, Celia Reisman and James Stewart.
VIRTUAL INSTALLATION GUIDE
Wondering if a painting is the right fit for your space?
We can help by virtually installing any of our available artworks into your home or office. Our complimentary service allows you to experiment with a variety of sizes & styles, giving you an immediate sense of what works best for your unique taste.
Let us make your art selection process both easy & fun!
Max Mason featured in John Thornton's The Spirit of Baseball, New Art by Max Mason
Max Mason is an extraordinary painter, and although he has painted many subjects, baseball is perhaps closest to his heart. He talks about his new show that is an attempt to capture the enduring spirit of the game.
Christine Lafuente featured in John Thornton's Artist Christine Lafuente, Music in Paint
Artist Christine Lafuente has a show of very beautiful painterly landscapes and still lives that are inspired by her love of music. A graduate of Bryn Mawr and the PA Academy of the Fine Arts, Christine is a joy to talk to.
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to host The Portrait of the Artist… And Other Things, curated by local art consultant and former CEO of The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), Maida R. Milone. This sixteen-artist exhibition features works by Gross McCleaf artists, Christine Lafuente and James Stewart, as well as other artists, many with strong ties to Philadelphia and past group exhibitions with the gallery – Katie Baldwin, Jill Bell, Donald E. Camp, Vincent Desiderio, Marguerita Hagan, Darla Jackson, Robert Jackson, John Karpinski, Alex Kanevsky, Chelsey Luster, Kirk Maynard, Lydia Panas, Hiro Sakaguchi and Ron Tarver.
Elizabeth Johnson: On the Gross McCleaf website you describe your still life arrangements as “tiny cities floating on an enamel sea.” This struck me because, while browsing your website, I noticed that you’ve lived and worked near large bodies of water. You write: “I am conjuring up milky fogs in the space around each season’s crop of flowers: tulips, daffodils, peonies, roses, zinnias, ranunculus, lilies.” Would you say that having lived near water influences your tendency to build colorful forms emerging from a silvery or grey backgrounds?
Christine Lafuente: I grew up next to the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY. My father grew up in Cuba, which is at the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea...
Elizabeth Johnson: How do you like Major League Baseball’s new rules: the pitch timer, shift restrictions, and bigger bases?
Max Mason: As an unrepentant traditionalist, I was initially horrified. But after watching a spring training game on TV, I changed my mind on two things: the pitch clock will speed up the pace of play, which is good, and I accepted the size of the bases almost immediately. If the players aren’t complaining and it makes the game safer––what the heck. The shift restrictions, however, are terrible. They reward a limited approach to the art and science of batting...
“I am drawn to subjects that I don’t fully understand visually, that are mysterious, elusive, and at times almost impossible to see clearly.”
-Christine Lafuente
In Subtones in Springtime, Christine Lafuente explores the parallels between color and musical form in her newest series of paintings. The overlapping terminology between art and music helps to illuminate comparisons between the two fields. Lafuente says, “I begin to transpose visual experience into an imaginary painting experience… like a musician who reads music with the playing of a specific instrument in mind, this kind of looking is experienced in the language of oil color, brushwork, and flatness.” Likewise, Lafuente focuses on the relevance of subtones, which she likens to subconscious presence, or emotional states that can be captured and embedded within her works.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
