Harriet Sawyer / “Being On the Grid” / 72″ x 48″ / Oil on Canvas

WOMEN PAINTING WOMEN Favorite paintings of women by women,   with a focus on contemporary, living artists.   The goal of this show — as with the group’s past shows — is to expand the collective sense of what a woman is and means in the realm of art. Above all, though, the hope of the artists in this exhibit is to show variety, and to continue to build community and visibility for women artists. Doing so means providing showcase opportunities beyond this one exhibition.

Entry Submission Rules: Please email art@rjdgallery.com images of up to 3 works by June 15th, 2013. Please label submissions with last name, first name, title, size, medium and retail price. All works must be original creations by the artist and available for purchase. Exhibition is open to artists working in Oil, Acrylic, Mixed-media, Photography, Watercolor, and Drawing. (Please, no video art or sculpture.)

If Chosen: 300dpi images of you work must be available by July 1st, 2013. Artists are responsible for all shipping costs, including insurance to the gallery. Gallery will be responsible for shipping and insurance upon return. All selected work must be shipped to the gallery on or before August 15th, 2013. Accepted works cannot be substituted and are committed until Nov. 21st 2013. Artist allows the Gallery the right to reproduce their work for marketing of this event. If sold, the artist will receive 50% of the sale price and a percentage of the Gallery’s proceeds will be donated to local charities.

Fountain Gallery Director Jason Bowman, Christine Burgin, Agnes Gund, and Honoree William Wegman. Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

Fountain Gallery is the premier venue in New York City representing artists living with mental illness, and more than 30 of these artists, ranging in experience from highly trained to self-taught, were on hand to present their work to nearly 500 guests. A dazzling array of art was on display, from watercolor, oil and acrylic paintings to mixed media pieces, digital photography and more.

The evening was NYC-themed in décor, food — and art. The art, exhibited on two floors dubbed “Uptown” and “Downtown,” included striking representations of city landmarks, streets and scenes, selected by curator Sasha Nicholas. Auction bidding was electronic, facilitated by a squad of “bidding valets” sporting illuminated hats and iPads, and auction participants tracked bids on large screens. Art sales topped those of any Fountain Gallery event since 2001, when this annual benefit was launched as Celebration of Life.

A guest examines “Doors of New York 1-5″ by Fountain Gallery artist Martin Cohen. Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

WABC-TV’s talented Lucy Yang introduced William Wegman, the recipient of the Esther Montanez Award, established in memory of Fountain Gallery’s founding director. William was recognized for his inclusive artwork and his support of artists living with mental illness.

William — who is probably best known for the endearing photographs of his Weimaraner dogs Man Ray, Fay Ray and Fay’s progeny — has created work for Sesame Street on PBS and has appeared on Saturday Night Live. The author of numerous children’s books (Penguin will publish his next in the fall), William has exhibited his photographs, videos, paintings and drawings in museums and galleries throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S. His incredible art is inclusive, full of humor, generous of spirit and broad in its appeal.

I chatted with Bill after his presentation and commented on how he accepted the Fountain Gallery honor humbly and with characteristic dry wit. I had not known he lives in Chelsea! He donated a piece to the auction, as did other top names such as Tony Bennett, Paul Davis, Bentley Meeker, Jason Rohlf, Harriet Sawyer, Ungano & Agriodimas, and The Walther Collection.

The atmosphere was electric and the sales volume high. Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

Riffing on the word “Mad” (as used in the event’s title), Fountain Gallery Director and friend Jason Bowman noted:

I’m frequently asked, ‘Aren’t all artists crazy?’ I usually smile politely and answer, ‘I can understand how you might think that.’ The truth is that to be an artist means that one is expressive, maybe even eccentric, but no: Not all artists struggle with the severe effects of depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Fountain Gallery artists use art as a vehicle for channeling their creative visions and overcoming the challenges of serious and persistent mental illness. The Gallery is a place where we focus on strengths, appreciate creativity and beauty, and make money through a cooperative business.

Event Vice-Chair Rich Hiler; Chair Carmel Fromson; FH President Kenn Dudek; Comm. member John Ambrosini;
Chairs Rick Froio, Dario Gristina, and Gabriel Stefania. Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

Fountain Gallery has attracted distinguished supporters. Among the winning auction bidders was the legendary Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). My grandmother was an “Agnes,” so I prefer to think of Agnes Gund as “Ms. Gund.” At any rate, Ms. Gund has collected Fountain Gallery art and curated an exhibition there, and she has commended the Gallery as “a place where you can view fine works of art made by a group of excellent artists.”

The art auction featured a delightful way to track bids. On wall at left: William Wegman’s donated piece “On Edge.” Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

I’ve attended exhibitions at Fountain Gallery’s elegant space at 702 Ninth Avenue at 48th Street. Recently I had an opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into their shows and other activities: As part of a collaboration between an organization I founded, the J. Luce Foundation, and Stonehenge Realty, Fountain Gallery presented an exhibition at the Stonehenge-Luce Pop-Up Non-Profit Annex on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Gallery artists and volunteers skillfully installed a show of works on paper in this “pop-up” space while another Fountain Gallery show was on view at its Ninth Avenue home base. While these two exhibitions were up and running, Fountain Gallery artists also made a splash at the Outsider Art Fair. Another Fountain Gallery exhibit is being enjoyed by the public on an ongoing basis: A large-scale, three part sculpture, unveiled at the Kennedy Center in 2011, is now on view in the lobby of the Citi building in Long Island City. This dedicated group is perpetually juggling multiple projects with panache.

Fountain Gallery artist Azure Bourne with “I Love N.Y.” During the program she shared her personal story with the assembled guests.
Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

Fountain Gallery was founded in 2000 by its parent organization, Fountain House, the world’s leading recovery center for people living with mental illness. Members and staff collaborate to develop successful employment, education, wellness, and housing programs and perform all the functions necessary to keep the community going. By working together, Fountain House members and staff create a culture that transforms lives and simultaneously works to fight the stigma associated with mental illness.

The author with his old friend Lisa Tai, Fountain House Controller, in front of the NYC-themed signage. Photo credit: Saskia Kahn.

About “stigma”: Striving not to discriminate against people with disabilities such as mental illness is important and worthy. But seeing the awe-inspiring art created by these gifted artists viscerally drives the point home: If people with mental illness can do this, what else might they be able to do? I am proud to support Fountain Gallery and Fountain House, and I applaud their groundbreaking and enlightened mission. I urge you to get involved.

When asked about using herself as a model and the simple restrictions of only being able to look at herself in the mirror from a certain angle and still be able to paint, she said, “What started as a practical situation — the need for a model — has turned into a very important aspect of my work: the self-portrait. That is the means by which I can access the personal within the archetypal/historical narrative. The self-portrait places restrictions on the variety of poses, as does the ‘portrait’ genre: these seeming limitations open up the psychological realm that is important to me, so I consent to work within these limitations… The portrait — indeed the self-portrait — seems to me to hold much more potential for exploration of the contemporary psyche in the current day and age. I am interested in the representation of the self, and how the outer and inner worlds collide. Painting a self-portrait, I can easily access questions of vision, viewpoint, artifice, reality, subject/object, viewer/beholder, creator/creation, interior/exterior, illusion/surface: these questions seem inherent in the medium.”

Portrait as an Allegory of Fidelity was inspired by a fresco at Norton Simon Museum by Francesco di Giorgio Martini. A figure stands on a dog, a symbol of fidelity (from the Latin fides — thus “Fido” for you dog lovers). The figures gaze at each other in trust and the figure points her finger to her ultimate trust in God. The simplicity of that relationship is no longer so simple.

When asked if her paintings ever tell her to do something when she is working on them she said, “The answer is emphatically ‘Yes!’ The initial ideas are sparked by an art historical reference, or by a color combination I am interested in playing with, or sometimes by a narrative idea — to give another example of this last, the notion that I have unexpectedly become a ‘soccer mom’ myself. (Identity, role-playing, exterior persona) I set out with a vague idea—say, that I will paint myself as a soccer mom — and hopefully the painting tells me what to do.”

Hasler’s paintings are layered with obvious references to daily life and to less obvious “contemporary equivalents for symbols from the past that don’t work anymore.”

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” When the artist is the sitter, Hasler adds, “Here is the exterior as seen by the interior… While the self-portrait implies that the artist is showing us the truth, a representation of the exterior in disguise conveys the impossibility and doubleness of this endeavor.”

“Memory III” by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

“The Three Tatis” by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches.

For her paintings, Selski plucks people mid-story from tales of her own making. They are each portrayed in detailed compositions that combines art references and Selski’s personal experiences through influences including Renaissance painting, Greek writings, Flemish masters, Surrealism and Magical Realism to create an unusual type of portraiture–especially since none of the subjects actually exist or are part of any known story.

To tackle a world where William Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll make complimentary bedfellows, Selski infuses playful images and balanced compositions to provide a sense of ease for viewers. Only upon close examination do the rich compositions reveal heroines with hearts that aren’t pure, convictions that aren’t steady or dark twists to the expected. These discoveries move the paintings beyond beautifully-costumed characters from an implied historic period (with unexpected appendages) into a rich inner world filled with secrets, memories and decisions waiting to be made.

“The Last Glimpse of the Real Me” by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches.

“Invisible Light” by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.

In culling characters and their stories from a fictitious world, Selski symbolically channels the uneasy nature of living and being human. Selski’s art addresses the complexity of motherhood, familial love, identity and the fragility of childhood and life. Her paintings explore the clash between myth and reality, control and spontaneity, permanence and impermanence, and appearances and actuality.

“Here Today” by Margo Selski. Oil and beeswax on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

To mimic Renaissance paintings, Selski developed a unique technique involving oil paint, beeswax, aged tints and frozen paintings to cause cracks in the beeswax. With time, Selski modified the method to create fissures by scratching the beeswax with dental tools and filling the crevises with oil paint. The process is repeated several times until the desired effect is fully realized, according to Selski. The result gives the contemporary work the appearance of belonging to history.

“Young Lady with a Teacup Piglet and Attention” by Margo Selski. Oil and beeswax on panel, 16 x 12 inches.

In presenting the classical and the contemporary, Selski presents the idea that her art cannot fit in a single classification with one identity–just like people.

“As wearying as the balancing act can be, I realize that I would not be content with my art being entirely one thing or another,” Selski writes in her artist statement. “I would never want to paint straightforward portraits. I would never want to paint abstract paintings. And further, I realize that I would not be content with myself being only one thing or another. I guess that I am truly most comfortable balanced between the extremes. Somewhere in the middle, somewhere that is neither East nor West nor North nor South, not here nor there, not then or now, is me.”

“Ladies Underwater Gardening Society Rule No. 5″ by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.

“Ladies Underwater Gardening Society Night Drilling” by Margo Selski. Oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches. (Sold)

BASIC FACTS: Paintings by Margo Selski are currently on view at Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY 11963. www.rjdgallery.com

Margo Selski’s solo shows include galleries in California, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, South Dakota and Kentucky. Her work is collected by museums including the Plains Art Museum (North Fargo, ND), Tweed Museum of Art (Duluth, ND), Frederick R. Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN) and others. Her work has been exhibited in group museum shows including the Walker Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), the North Dakota Museum of Art (Grand Forks, ND) and others.

Selski’s studio is located in the state of Washington, USA. The current exhibition at the Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery in Sag Harbor marks the first time Selski is showing in the Hamptons, NY.

© Pat Rogers and Hamptons Art Hub 2010-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. This includes all photographs and images. Text excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pat Rogers and Hamptons Art Hub with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

One look at Christina Pettersson‘s portfolio might lead you to think her a bit melancholy. Her drawings poetically sanguine, solemn, still and often seemingly devoid of life. In her “The Hunting Ground,” her self-image lies strewn upon steps, skirt cascading down the stairs pooled in blood. A crocodile and curious turtle wait. Images like these certainly can seem morbid, as are the graves of famous authors, the tree that she sees as being by her grave and others. But appearances can be deceiving.

A closer look at many pieces peels away a deeper layer. Her “Desdemona Sleeping Beside Death” gives a clue. Desdemona was slain by Othello, in Shakespeare’s novel, due to her supposed betrayal. One side of the graphite drawing shows the murdered one, the other side shows Desdemona very much alive and only resting. There is a minx in the middle chomping upon a toad, an allusion, she said, to Othello’s statement that he would rather be a toad in the mouth of a minx than see Desdemona live with her betrayal. This drawing seems to show two sides of a coin and make a fool of Othello.

Using literary references throughout her works, Pettersson’s pieces are multi-layered. By using herself as her model, she is both the narrator of the story and a character within it, adding modern meaning to traditional allegory.

Her piece “We Are No Longer in the Land of Kings,” shows herself with a cropped top with a sword slung over her shoulder and an impaled head hanging lightly near the tip. This bearded and wild-looking fellow represents in the most shallow sense the Assyrian Holofernes and she, with blood dripping down her belly-button pierced stomach, symbolizes the Biblical harlot and holy heroine Judith. But this is only skin deep. Utilizing this imagery on a blank page with no background implicates that this is not a mere landscape or historical rendering, but an abstract showing an idea. She explained just that, that her piece is meant to be “memory of no time…” She has, in essence, killed history. She is now an inventor of reality and time means nothing.

“Reality is not the world as it exists outside our minds, but the product of the imagination as it shapes the world,” she said. “Because it is constantly changing as we attempt to find imaginatively satisfying ways to perceive the world, reality is an activity, not a static object. We put together parts of ourselves in an attempt to make it seem coherent. Recent research into the brain and memory tells us that the very act of remembering is a creation, and every time you remember, your brain is writing the story anew.”

She seems to take comfort in the idea of renewal. Her installation “Resurrection” features flowers which spring forth beneath disassembled pieces of what must have been a building, a crumbled wall after destruction, reminiscent of a story she heard about the flowers that bloomed after the bombing of Hiroshima. In “Christina Pettersson’s Grave,” the tree she imagines perhaps just behind her headstone is filled with birds, renderings of extinct species in Audobon’s book. The birds he once stuffed in order to draw she now brings to life through her drawings.

Sometimes, her works seem like fantasy. In “The Sentinel,” she lies almost seductively, nude, on what seems to be a bear skin rug atop crumbling steps. A, possibly live, bear cub sits by, looking down. Birds, almost in suspension, hover above. She claims that she is not intending to draw what the outside world views as fantasy, but, rather, that everything is fantasy.

Using literary references throughout her works, Pettersson’s pieces are multi-layered. By using herself as her model, she is both the narrator of the story and a character within it, adding modern meaning to traditional allegory.

“It’s all a fantasy, not just art, all of it. If you put on makeup and carefully chose an outfit and pose a certain way for the camera, is that not a fantasy of how you want to be seen?” She added, “A drawing glows like nothing in life ever can … Empty one world and exchange it for a new sultry vision, one more voluptuous.”

She visited the old habitats of many well-known authors, including Jack Kerouac, William Butler Yeats and William Faulkner, among others, and sketched bricks from their homes. These domiciles once were the foundation upon which these literary masters nourished themselves; their inspirations welled forth from these hallowed walls which Pettersson has so simply captured in her drawings. The bricks are just a cornerstone of an idea, again a way to memorialize the lives of authors gone by.

When asked why her works gravitate toward death and if she has been affected by it, she answers, “Nothing I would call traumatic. If anything, the depiction of death in my artwork is precisely because I have not had to deal with it intensely, and, thus, can explore it visually and even romantically without great pains.”

Born in Sweden but raised in Miami, Pettersson began exploring art as a child. Her mother put her in an art class when she was 6 and she went on to go to arts magnet programs starting in the third grade. She attended New World School of the Arts in downtown Miami for high school and received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.

When asked what first propelled her into the art world, she said, “I have no idea … I only know that I’ve always been interested in stories, the reading and the telling of them and how they shape our lives. I am still doing what I liked doing most at 6 and 10 and 14 and 20 … and 35. I find I am not so much interested in telling you the stories of my past, which keep going out the door, as imagining new ones.

In addition to drawings, she also does video work, implementing sounds and words both written and spoken into live action.

“I got lucky and my very first video has been displayed at the prestigious Margulies Collection in Miami for many years. A later one was shown at MOCA in their yearly Optic Nerve competition. It really became a way of recording my travels and also explorations within South Florida. I love just driving around streets I’ve never been down and finding some empty building, unexpected tree, bit of history. But my perfect spaces are admittedly more natural. I would rather walk in the deep woods than anywhere else. That can be a tough thing living here, where half the year the heat and mosquitoes make it uninhabitable,” she said.

It is not the heat, but the cold that inspires her the most, leading her to do residencies in frozen places even in the dead of winter. Currently, however, Pettersson, a South Florida Cultural Consortium winner, is an artist-in-residence at the Deering Estate at Cutler. It is there that her work comes to life. She has also lived in Broward County and created masterpieces in various areas, including exhibits in Hollywood through the years and one at the Girls Club in Ft. Lauderdale.

She said of her creative process, “I usually have something on, music, but just as often it’s NPR. I’m a bit of a junky. I’m addicted to Radio Lab … and coffee. The morning is my real exploring time, and I like it real quiet. I like to sit on the floor surrounded by pillows and books, read something, browse images, stare at the ceiling, whatever. By late afternoon, I’m more in the working zone only considering pragmatics, a little to the left, a little darker, etc.”

It takes her several months to create a project and she is slowly evolving her style, and now exploring adding color to her images in the form of pastel and colored pencil. But she doesn’t plan to make this shift anytime soon.

When not drawing or creating videos, she loves camping, birdwatching, cooking, playing piano, watching movies and TV shows, and diving into a good book. She spends time with her long term partner and sometime collaborator, who is a photographer.

Sometimes the balances within the work become uncertain. “Relationships become inverted. Mothers become children. Children become empty eggs. Princesses become wolves. Eggs, children, families, all start to divide and become something unrecognizable,” she elaborates.

During graduate school in Minnesota, Selski created a “recipe” for faux craquelure, smearing her paintings with beeswax and freezing them. She then painted in the cracks with oil and beeswax to mimic Renaissance painting, creating an aged quality. Today she has modified the technique using dental tools to scratch the cracks into the surface.

“We previewed a few artworks of Margo’s with special collectors and they were immediately drawn to her unique technique, imaginative figures, and the untold story she offered the viewer. We are thrilled to have her work in the gallery,” says Richard Demato, owner of New York-based Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, which represents her work.

Her paintings will hang in the galley through December beginning with an opening on November 24.

An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, September 15, from 6 to 8pm.

“SHADOWED DREAMS” features art by gallery artists. Exhibiting artworks are Donato Giancola, Zachary Thornton, Kevin Muente, Harriet Sawyer, Christina Pettersson, Kyla Zoe Rafert, Michael Carson, Phillip Thomas and Kevin Sloan.

“SHADOWED DREAMS” presents narrative artworks from artists who share similar sympathies. The art exhibited delves into private lives and passing moments of contemplation. Each artist, in his or her own way, captures people dabbled by secreted darkness. The art in “Shadowed Dreams” portray worlds filled with implied ambiguity, psychological wandering to murky places or fragmented dreams clinging to the reality from which they spring.

Art prices range from $2,500 to $45,000.

“Shadowed Dreams” will have an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 15 from 6 to 8pm at the Richard J. Demato Fine Arts Gallery, 90 Main St, Sag Harbor, NY. 631-725-1161

The gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays. Hours are 11 am until 6pm on Thursdays and Sundays. The gallery remains open until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. www.rjdgallery.com

To protect the privacy of her family members, Selski translates real secrets into a surreal visual language, drawing off Flemish 19th century portraiture. Yet her paintings look as if Jan Van Eyck took a little trip down the rabbit hole. Roosters and baby lambs crawl out from underneath petticoats and even the smallest of children are followed by ominous shadows. The distance from Kentucky to Flemish fantasyland is far indeed. We wonder how closely rendered the family secrets are…

Her works incorporate novel techniques to achieve an old (or even outside of time) effect. In an e-mail to The Huffington Post, Selski wrote that she concocted a recipe for fake craquelure, smearing her paintings with beeswax and then freezing them in a Chinese restaurant’s freezer. She then paints inside the frozen cracks in the beeswax to mimic Renaissance paintings that have cracked with age. Another trick up Selski’s sleeve involves embedding a ghostly under-image into her painting. She created her own paint that decays over time, thus revealing new things about the painting over the course of 10 years. Even the paintings’ secrets eventually come to light.

Check out Selski’s surreal paintings and see if you can solve her family mysteries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDTqEvxZh8w

Christina Pettersson is an acclaimed artist whose large-scale drawings, videos, and installations have charmed and amazed Miami collectors, curators, and gallery go-ers for quite some time. The small-scale work in her NYC gallery show at Launch F18, curated by Meaghan Kent of site95, maintains the detailed artistry of her larger work, while also casting an enduring and loving gaze upon a simpler time gone by. Christina was in residence at Yaddo last year, and is currently artist-in-residence at the famed Deering Estate in Miami.