March 2014
Haynes Galleries presents “The Landscape: Views and Variations”
March 14 to April 12, 2014
Reception: Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. March 14, 2014
NASHVILLE— Haynes Galleries is pleased to present “The Landscape: Views and Variations,” featuring the work of dozens of renowned Contemporary Realists from around the globe. The exhibit will be on view from March 14 to April 12 at Haynes Galleries, on the Music Row Roundabout. An opening reception will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 14.
This show is a tour de force, from the twilight dreams of radical Realist Burton Silverman to Zoey Frank’s sun-dappled forays into nature. This distinguished roster of artists shines a light on some of Haynes Galleries’ finest and most diverse work.
“Landscape painting is about light and the illuminous quantities that it creates,” says gallery owner Gary R. Haynes. “It can be a portrait of a place, capturing it at a specific moment in time. We can revisit familiar places in unexpected ways, reignite our own feelings about a place, or explore entirely new ones, but it’s always the light that creates the inherent drama.”
That drama is evident in Nicholas M. Raynolds’ gritty, unexpected scenes, where the natural and man-made world collide to stunning effect. In a series of paintings that feature rooftops and backyards, power wires and weathered clapboards, the landscape peeks through — billowing clouds in one painting, misty mountains in another.
Nancy Depew’s large-scale, hyper-realistic forestscapes are so alive, they almost seem to breathe. Lush with moss, deeply shadowed yet kissed with light, these bewitching forest scenes glow with an otherworldly aura. They are, in a word, magical.
Light is always the star of Peter Poskas’ paintings, but place is equally important. In Poskas’ hands, a simple white farmhouse becomes an icon of a fading way of life. A clutch of tiger lilies punctuates the landscape, showing Maine’s untamed beauty. A lightkeeper’s cottage becomes a study in solitude. There is poetry in his brushstrokes and on every canvas.
Cindy House’s training as a wildlife biologist informs her work. As she says, “To capture a moment in time means knowing which plants are in bloom and where they are to be found. For this reason, I paint the landscape I know and understand best.” She renders that landscape — the rocky coast and rolling meadows of New England— in such exquisite detail that viewers can almost taste the salt spray, smell the dewy pines and hear the rush of a swollen stream in spring.
Contemporary master Burton Silverman may be best known for his portraiture, but his landscape work is equally sublime. Twilight lends an air of mystery and solitude to his quiet roadsides and riverbanks.
On the other end of the spectrum, Marc Dalessio’s plein air impressions of the Eastern European countryside are exuberantly sunlit, dancing with color and contrast. There’s a sense of immediacy and motion in his work — even in a mirror-still river or a tranquil farm valley.
Jeanne Mackenzie’s canvases overflow with the bold color and quality of light that can only be found in the American West. Her kinetic, painterly brushstrokes blur the lines between Impressionism and Realism, giving her work a style all its own.
For each painter in “The Landscape: Views and Variations,” light is a muse, a point of reverence, a revelation. Each harnesses that light to create something vibrant, something dramatic. This show invites viewers to become part of the drama and the intrigue— to step into the light.