Find Out What Ever Happened to Abstract Art and
Why You Should Care…..

Five Painters at Hera Gallery Breathe New Life into a Trend That Thrives Nationally Despite Decades of Outcry That "Painting is Dead"

Abstraction Evolving, Curated by Katherine Veneman

Featuring paintings by:
Colleen Carreiro, Jacqueline Ott
Adam Stanforth, Anne Tait, Jason Travers

November 16-December 21, 2002

Reception: Saturday, November 16, 5-7 PM
Gallery Talk by all five artists: Thursday, November 21, 7:30 PM

Despite lengthy declarations of painting's demise, it persists. In both the art world's outposts and its center the discussion of "the end of painting" is virtually over. Abstract painting, however, has remained somewhat of a magnet for criticism in recent years, charged with and-perhaps prematurely-found guilty of the following crimes: disregard for contemporary issues, serving an elitist province of a few, and of being tragically, unmistakably un-hip. After all, why would anyone bother to learn a strict formalist canon that is difficult to master and supposedly underappreciated by the public as well as critics? What could possibly be so important, and moreover, what is new about practicing what is considered a 20th Century art form that presumably reached its apex with Jackson Pollack?

Abstraction Evolving at Wakefield's Hera Gallery poses some questions, and offers an argument that local painters working abstractly do indeed have things to say that are of interest to Rhode Island viewers as well as tied to current cultural trends.

In this exhibit held November 16-December 21, 2002, five artists search for meaning in their abstract works by using strategies that are by turns obsessive, spiritual, responsive, intuitive, intellectual and contemplative.

"I was really looking for artists who had something to say that resonated in today's culture, and to find out whether or not abstraction is an evolving art form. I was excited to find that there are these new directions and continuations of previous ideas that are being extended by local painters today," says Gallery Director Katherine Veneman, who curated this show.

Participating artists are: Colleen Carreiro, Jacqueline Ott, Adam Stanforth, Anne Tait, and Jason Travers. A gallery talk will be held at 7:30 PM on Thursday, November 21 in which all five artists will discuss their work.

The Search for the Spiritual in Art: Colleen Carreiro
Strongly inspired by minimalist painter Agnes Martin, Colleen Carreiro documents her search for the spiritual in art. Her quietly resonant paintings chart a process of exploration, as the artist seeks to portray both what is seen and unseen in images inspired by natural forms or elements. Using a grid to structure her atmospheric paintings,

Colleen Carreiro, Daisy Innocence, 21" x 17", watercolor and ink

Carreiro's work sets order versus chaos and the manmade versus the natural, and conveys the mathematical order found within natural forms. In these works the grid is in front, behind, or more often interwoven with an uncontained atmosphere and implies a continuation of imagery beyond the edges of the canvas. Cloudy veils, undefined mists, or undulating forms move in and out of the space.

Carreiro explains that her work is about finding "the cusp between structure and energy, between movement and rest." In a world that wages war between culture and nature, Carreiro's focus on this dichotomy seems particularly apt. Her interest in spirituality, a long-neglected topic in mainstream contemporary art, may well point to a growing trend as the increasingly fearsome reality of world politics causes people's priorities and interests to divert towards more reflective avenues.

Carreiro has studied at University of Rhode Island and University of Massachusetts, as well as with a mentoring artist, Bill Martin. She lived and worked in Agnes Martin's former home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for several years, and drew inspiration from her surroundings. She has exhibited in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and California.

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Uncovering Patterns: Jacqueline Ott

Image at Right: LaLa #15a, detail,acrylic on acrylic panel, 32" x 43"

Providence painter Jacqueline Ott's paintings are about developing patterns, creating systems, and discovering small variations within a disciplined, obsessive process. Like Carreiro, Ott works on a grid-but the similarity ends there. Ott's grid is an organizing principle that commands respect from every other painting element, be it a brushstroke, swirl of the wrist, or a dab of color. The scope of these artworks at first seems entirely intellectual, but a longer look reveals that intuition guides Ott's methods as well. It is this intuition that brings Ott's paintings to life, that allows her to make them glow, swirl, and appear ready to leap from panels that barely contain them. These paintings beg to be looked at up close. While doing so, the viewer finds that acrylic paint was applied directly to opaque acrylic panels, in which a small margin along the panel's edge reveals a series of overlapping, slightly irregular brushstrokes layered in rhythmic, decidedly hand-made patterns.

Ott likens the painting's filmy surface quality to a skin, and indeed, there is a tactile presence to her work that adds dimensions to its strong patterns. She says,

"I'm interested in the contrast between the calligraphic quality of the brush strokes and the structure on which they are hung, and the spatial and textural irregularities that occur despite the regularity with which the paint is applied. Equally important to me are evidence of the hand, economy of technique, and the delicate, ethereal quality of a thin film of paint."

This attention to physical mark making combined with the use of a mechanical structure creates a timely dialogue in our era of technological growth and mass production.

Ott received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art. She has exhibited extensively in the Northeast, participating in recent shows at the Miller Block Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; the Danforth Museum of Art, Danforth, Massachusetts; risd/works, Providence, Rhode Island; and the Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts among many others. She has received grants from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts (Painting Fellowship, 2000; Artist Project Grant, 1991), the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work is in numerous collections, including those of the Newport Art Museum and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

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Slices of Life, Suggestive Gestures: Adam Stanforth
Providence artist Adam Stanforth makes free, gestural paintings. Like Carreiro and Ott, Stanforth employs a grid to organize his paintings, which are comprised of smaller works that have been carefully reconfigured in groups-often in groups of nine. These groupings make up one completed work. Stanforth's acrylics on panel are made quickly, using fast, spontaneous gestures that often seem to extend freely off the paintings edge. The freshness of these works is striking.

Above Image: Adam Stanforth, Untitled, acrylic on panel, 24" x 30"

Instead of editing initial works, Stanforth brings creative control into his process by selecting and arranging components to make up his finished piece. His imagery hints at natural forms that are seen close up and often recur in more than one panel. Sometimes these works as a whole suggest simultaneous narratives taking place in an enigmatic landscape. The viewer makes links between visual events in one panel to the next, relating or separating their content-the effect is akin to channel surfing. Other paintings imply a series of portraits of one object, blown up, turned around, and seen in various lights and from multiple vantage points.

The artist explains that his gestural works "happen in fluid moments where the paint reacts and relates to itself. Symbols, natural forms, landscapes and movements appear from the mixture of the matter; ultimately, I'm searching for these resolutions within the process."

Stanforth is a 2000 graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited in Rochester, New York as well as in Rhode Island. Most recently he shows his work this month at AS220, Providence, Rhode Island.

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Nature vs. Nurture, or The Body, Science, and Spirit in Artwork:
Anne Tait
Of all the artists in the exhibit, Anne Tait is most interested in explicitly representing the clash between nature vs. nurture in her series of tondi, circular oil paintings on glass.In her exploration of this format, Tait finds multiple associations such as lenses, scientific slides of microscopic work, astral bodies, dinner plates, and pre-Renaissance and Renaissance Italian tondo painting.

Tait's paintings on glass reveal several layers of translucent paint, built up to reveal, hide, and alter the previous and successive films of paint. A spiraling motion can be detected in many of these circular works as colors shift, ebb, and flow. Because there is no edge, the paintings appear inwardly directed, leaving viewers with no resting place or ledge as they look up, down, and most of all through and around each layer as it revolves, fades or jumps towards the next. In many works these layers seem caught on the verge of transformation, just a moment before the painting can coalesce into a static object. Tait often uses fingerprints, lending both an unmistakable human presence and homogeneity to her marks.

Image at Right, Anne Tait

Tait explains that this process of layering allows her to "obscure and reveal the previous level. Each level becomes like layers of thought, and the different forms one thought can take. Some layers obscure others, some surprisingly amplify a previous layer that seemed obscure or lost."

Tait resides in Providence and holds an MFA from American University in Washington, DC, and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, where she graduated with honors. She also holds a BA from Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio. Tait has exhibited extensively in the Northeast, including solo shows at the Wheeler Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island; AS220, Providence, Rhode Island; Island Arts, in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Chautauqua Institute, in Chautauqua, New York. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including shows at the List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island; and Woods-Gerry Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island.

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Painting as Object: Jason Travers
Jason Travers' recent paintings hold the room as distinctive objects, exerting a tangible presence much in the way that a charismatic person commands attention in a crowd. To an extent the works are somewhat inspired by fishing and the sea, and what the artist calls "the quiet, universal silence of the deep." However, the paintings in Travers' latest series are more about committing to a process of working, as the artist ruthlessly pairs down anything that takes away from the magnetic presence of his work.

Image at Left: Jason Travers, Descending, oil on canvas, 72" 48"

One important idea about his paintings that Travers reiterates is that he cannot foresee what the painting will be before he is finished-but it is clear that his inner vision drives his every pictorial decision. In works such as The Angler, Descending, and Half Mile Down, strong swaths of deep blue pigment are countered by delicately rendered lines, shimmering down the length of the painting, and emitting an almost palpable echo as they hover in the waiting space. Other works have less involvement in terms of a relationship between the figure and ground (i.e. the foreground elements held in opposition to a background). Instead, these works convey a more solid feeling. Small variations in Travers' works create endless individuality within uniformity, and the size of each canvas relates to the human figure. Travers is an artist who listens to his work, and creates work that listens back uncannily.

Providence painter Travers earned his MFA from American University in Washington, DC, and his BFA from the Art Institute of Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, where he graduated with honors. He has exhibited nationally and has participated in numerous exhibits in New England, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Locally he has participated in group shows at the Woods-Gerry Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island; Lenore Gray Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island; Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to teaching at Rhode Island School of Design's pre-college program, Travers is an experienced undergraduate teacher and currently serves as a Visiting Instructor at Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island; University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.

Hera Gallery is handicapped accessible, and free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday (1-5) and Saturday (10-4). Please contact 401/789-1488 or see www.heragallery.org for more information. This exhibition was partially funded by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.

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