The 30th Anniversary Invitational (through October 29,2016) at
Saratoga Arts (tucked into the corner of Congress Park) is rewarding. Well-known local artists who are
participating include Katie DeGroot, Anne Diggory, Anne Francey, David Miller
and Laura Van Rosk. But I want to
single out just one work.
The sculptor Beverley Mastrianni has created sculptures a
person could walk through; one, on Skidmore College’s campus, offered the
sounds of people speaking (insulting, as I remember!) as visitors walked
through. Mastrianni is still working in three dimensions, but has also begun
“painting and engraving through the paint into aluminum panels,” she says, and
the new series suits her. Here is “Mountain Sketch #15” :
I have read the description of how she has worked this
particular small wall piece, but I
remain mystified... and that’s a good thing. Painted can diminish a mountain; Agnes Martin said of her
attempts: “I used to paint mountains here in New Mexico and I thought my
mountains looked like ant hills” (from “The Untroubled Mind”). But Mastrianni’s mountain, while
measurable in inches, looms large in the gallery. The sunlight’s etched
reflection dazzles, just as it would in a distant vista. The combined textures
and colors surprise and delight, and continue to pull the viewer in as s/he
stands before this painting. See
the complete show... find your own favorite, and visit this artist’s website
(beverleymastrianni.com).
Schuylerville, down the road a bit from Saratoga, might be
best known as the site where General Burgoyne surrendered in 1777, a defining
moment in the Revolutionary War. Schuylerville’s main street houses a few small
businesses in lovely buildings; the Laffer Gallery is at 96 Broad Street
(thelaffergallery.com). Two
artists here kept me walking back to their paintings to take another look:
Leslie Peck and Teri Malo.
Leslie Peck’s still lifes are perfectly executed in flat
strokes made of muted colors. In a different way than Cézanne’s, the objects
float off the foundation tables and shelves and move forward, creating two
planes (for me, anyway) on a single canvas. What Peck does to pull the layers together is to add the
color red. See “Martini Shaker and Frost”:
The colors just keep coming forward and receding, in a kind
of flow and rhythm that is unusual in a still life. The frost outside is pushed far away, even though the whites
and grays show up throughout the picture.
All that we see is warmth, and the textures of china and metal and
tablecloth; yet, somehow, there is also air.
The second painter is Teri Malo, whose one-foot square
painting, “Revisiting the Climbing Rock,” is here:
If Vermeer had painted
cliff-face instead of drawing-rooms, if all those backgrounds of Annunciations
came forward at once... they might look like this. The detail here and the
overall impression of time etched into rock is incredible. I found myself sitting in front of one
of Malo’s works just trying to see how it was done... really, you must go and
see for yourself....
