Isalos Fine Art

Last night we had the reception for our "New Art & Cheese" show. I know- great title, great theme! It's not that I'm running out of ideas, it's just that I'm too lazy to actually choose one of my many ideas. Besides, what's so great about a theme? It gives you something to structure a press release around, but nobody reads those anyway. Some artists like to respond to a prompt, like a theme, while others feel constrained. I just asked a few artists if they had anything new, and of course, they did.

Barbara Brady, Out of the Blue, oil, paper & charcoal on canvas, 48" x 72", $7,000 

The  show has some surprises. The first is immediately apparent when one walks into the gallery: paintings by Barbara Brady, especially her large oil "Out of the Blue." Brady, a resident of Sedgwick, creates gestural paintings that are often abstracted from her surroundings and experiences. "Out of the Blue" appears to be inspired by a place- perhaps a tidal estuary, glimpsed through a chaotic screen of reed-like vertical slashes, with occasional splashes of brilliant blue peeking through. The texture ranges from thick, caked-on and cracked mud-like browns to thin washes and  charcoal squiggles not quite obscuring the gesso beneath. Her paintings bristle with energy.

Another nice surprise is a new photograph  from Jeff Dworsky. I've become accustomed to much of his work depicting a bygone Stonington: intimate portraits of fishermen who are no longer with us and glimpses of a particular way of life that few of us PFAs* will ever experience or witness. "Untitled" (all his work is untitled) is of a moment on the top deck of a large ferry.  Set against horizontal bands of color (the deep green of the  deck, the deep blue of the  sea and lighter blue of the  sky) ferry passengers are caught in a moment. In the foreground, a woman in bright orange plastic clogs naps on a bench, her arm hanging loosely down to the deck, while beside her, a man is engrossed in a book. It feels like a number of separate little dramas take place simultaneously, back to the  pair of small boys in matching orange sweatshirts standing atop milk crates to improve their view from the rail.

The first hour of our reception resembled a get-together of local artists, but the traffic improved as the evening progressed, including first-time visitiors to Stonington. Not bad for November. We face a dlimma in these quieter months. We want to take time off, but there's still this tiny bit of potential, which sometimes translates to being able to pay the bills. Of course, I've been able to write this because only two people have come into the gallery over the last three hours. On Monday, Rebecca will set up her studio on one side of the gallery, so waiting for that one customer might actually make some sense.

*PFA: people from away