LEXI AXON

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

We are in an apocalyptic climate shift and the human organism is suffering a psychic frailty. Manipulated by uncontrolled situations, we can fall into a confused vertigo and become mesmerized by power and light. Art making is a direct connection from the brain through the hand, using primitive materials. I create replicas of surprising experiences. Neurologists tell us that, most of all, the human mind craves novelty. We like to be surprised, and caught off guard.

CHARLES CAJORI

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

“First is the acknowledgment of chaos: its contradictions and wayward forces. Then the struggle for coherence. Not a coherence of illusion but one of time and space—of form. The mode of attack is improvisational, multileveled, and non-rational. The resulting structures may seem complete, but they contain a hint of another stage. New attacks are called for. Structures evolve endlessly.” This statement by Charles Cajori was quoted by John Goodrich in artcritical, “Intimist Glow, Expansive Gestures: Charles Cajori (1921-2013).” It was initially written by the artist to accompany images of his work in the 2011 book by E. Ashley Rooney, 100 Artists of New England, and included at his recommendation in the catalog for his final solo exhibition in 2015 at David Finlay, Jr. in New York.

HELEN CANTRELL

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

The interesting thing about putting people into paintings is that the picture starts to be about them instead of about the painting. As a highly social and curious species, we are evolved to zoom in on the sight of other humans and to wonder about their stories. I like to try painting people every so often, especially to see how far I can push the painting aspect without becoming too anecdotal or sentimental—though of course that background story is always lurking. I am inspired by the Bay Area Figurative painters: as Caroline A. Jones wrote about them in Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-1965: “Their mature post-abstract figurative paintings preserved a sophisticated dialogue between abstraction and representation—the image oscillating between a recognizable subject and a boldly colored, abstract arrangement of thick slabs of paint.” I like the thick slabs of paint and bold colors, too. --H.C., January 2018

BARBARA GROSSMAN

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

Although they feature figures in interiors, the subject of my paintings and drawings is the interaction of color, shape, and space. How the figures engage with their surroundings—what happens between the figures and patterns—is what matters to me. For me space is the glue. I look for space that is simultaneously flat and deep, that creates tension, that rappels and attracts, that gives shape to life. The intervals of space between forms suggests the movement, sound, and rhythm of music, also alluded to by the women absorbed in music-making in my work. Color and pattern are strong components, but color is not a separate identity to me. It emanates from things and merges with light. It originates intuitively, and I want it to breathe and come alive. While based on observation and active looking, my paintings and drawings are invented with the intention of creating works that are fundamentally abstract. The parts that suggest a narrative—figures, tables, sheet music, animals—are in the service of abstraction, and the underlying meaning in the paintings is the visual choreography of the formal elements.

CATHERINE KEHOE

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

Most of my work has been in oil. One of the advantages of that medium is that it is forgiving; one can work on an oil painting for a very long time. Unlike oil, ink drawings live or die in a short time, and there is no resurrecting them once they have gone south. I began working with ink last year to see if I could come to accept the distortions in exchange for a kind of vitality that can exist in ink drawings. These self portraits represent part of this excursion into ink. For me, the making of a self-portrait is an unself-conscious activity. Once I begin, I quickly forget I am looking at myself. When I look at them later, it is as if someone has captured my image without my knowledge.

KEN KEWLEY

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

Before we give everything names, the world is more abstract than it is representational. What we see out there must be seen as an abstraction that we can adjust. Just as noise must be adjusted to make music, the visual must be adjusted, composed, if one wants to capture and share the excitement one gets from the world. Abstraction does not mean moving away from reality. It is describing something real by means other than rendering. One can see, strengthen, and compose the abstraction, without losing touch with the observable world. From “Notes on Color and Composition” by Ken Kewley

LAWRENCE MORELLI

PRESENCE: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FIGURE | EAST GALLERY | APRIL 12 - MAY 19, 2018

I cannot separate the processes of becoming from the process of painting. This is something which is particular to me and not meant as universal. I did not intend this, it is not an extension of how I believe an artist should approach his work, it’s just how it worked out for me. ​ In my early 30s I applied to the Yale M.F.A. program for all the wrong reasons and to my surprise made the final selection process. I interviewed with Andrew Forge and Bernie Chaet. You have to understand I grew up in Jackson, Michigan and knew who these guys were before I moved out East. It felt as if I were a comedian and had made the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—a bit awe struck. Two things came out of this which turned a light bulb on, however not brightly enough to light the room. Bernie Chaet said, ‘I was good enough but I don’t know what you want’, I couldn’t answer him. I did not make final cut and was sent a letter by Andrew Forge stating that my work was respected and before I took disappointment to heavily to make an appointment and speak with him. I did this. I went to his office in the Art and Architecture Building at Yale on a big blue summer day, I felt as if I were entering Valhalla. After greeting and sitting across from him at his desk, he kind of pushed back in his chair, folded his hands and said, “Your work—he paused for a moment—is tentative”, my first crit, the real-deal. As far as I was concerned he wasn’t talking about my work, he was talking about my life and I knew then, for me, the two were inseparable. It would be another 10 years before the stars constellated such that the room was fully lit—The Conversion of St. Paul on 95 North. I started going to an open figure session at Creative Arts Workshop on Friday night to paint. I wouldn’t get out of work and off the thruway until 7:00 p.m. The session ended at 9:00. The only spots open would be jammed up against something and I’d think, ‘o.k., So!’. I’d do a 10 count of breaths in/out to get the thruway out of me and then it was if I were jamming through 20 years of indecision and just—Go! My hand took the lead and I followed, I didn’t care anymore; I didn’t care about Yale, New York, or having dinner at Odeon with Julien Schnabel. I only wanted one thing—I wanted the painting, nothing more, that was it, that was everything—I was going home.

PAST
EXHIBITIONS

ARTIST
TALKS

UPCOMING
EXHIBITS

RENT THE
SPACE