Within the Woods: Landscape Drawings by
Mary Reilly
at the Museum of City of New York
October 9 - November 1, 2009
Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Click
here for more information on the exhibition
The finely rendered graphite drawings in Within the Woods reveal unexpected scenes of seclusion--natural vistas with meandering creeks and streams, silent forests, and majestic trees--all located in parks within an hour of the bustle of midtown Manhattan.
Mary Reilly's photorealist drawings of these serene environs are made using a reductive and additive process. First laying a mid–tone on the paper's surface with multiple layers of graphite, she then develops her image by pushing the darks and lifting the lights. The working and reworking of each piece creates a subtle shift in tone that imbues each piece with a sensual soft–focused photographic quality.
Born in Yorktown, New York, Mary Reilly has been a resident of New York City for over 20 years. She has studied at the School of Visual Arts, the Art Students League of New York, and the National Academy School for Design. Reilly is represented by the DFN Gallery, and her work has been featured in American Artist Drawing Magazine.
Click
here to view Mary Reilly's drawings at DFN Gallery
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Mary
Reilly, Moonlight Central Park
2006, graphite on paper, 23.5 x 18 in. |
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The Durst Organization and DFN Gallery Present
Jan Aronson "Portraits of Place"
October 7 - November 19, 2009
A reception for the artist will held on Thursday, November 5th, from 6 to 8 pm
In the Lobby of
1133 Avenue of the Americas
between West 43rd and West 44th Streets,
New York, NY
Endowing her subjects with an
almost supernatural uniqueness, while retaining the factual data that she obtains from photographs,
Jan Aronson creates portraits of mountains, deserts,
creeks, clouds, leaves, and people. The images are selected and
composed (for the most part) through the lens of her camera,
and then transformed by oil on canvas -- as well as by watercolor
or pastel on paper -- to reveal her own way of seeing and her
sensual engagement with the act of painting. Like many twenty-
first century realists, Aronson's work is more about ways of seeing
than about what is represented.
Jan Aronson is equally a realist, formalist, and an abstract painter
in her methods and concerns. She perceives and intensifies the
abstract quality of form color and light that she sees in natural
phenomena. Selecting subjects that are meaningful to her, she
paints to find out what will happen in the course of translating
reality from photos and personal associations into art. This time consuming,
highly skilled process is a defiant assertion of traditional
artistic craft in an age of virtual reality. Recalling a statement
by Dorothea Rockburn that "a painting is finished when it
speaks to me," Aronson believes that she knows when a work is
done because it separates from you when you have given it
everything you have to give.
Click
here to view Jan Aronson's paintings at DFN Gallery
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Jan
Aronson, Patagonian Landscape The Horns
1990, oil on canvas, 40 x 58 in. |
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