NYAB Event - Sam Cady "New Paintings"

Sam Cady "New Paintings"

RYAN LEE

This event has ended.

Sam Cady is known for meticulously shaped cut-out canvases which, through his particular style of perceptual realism, bring unexpected attention to "bits and pieces of the world." Cady is among the earliest painters to work on shaped canvases-and one of the only realist painters to focus on it exclusively. Each painting is a minimal distillation of a visual moment from everyday life or travels, a meditation on forms in space. "I'm drawn like a magnet, intuitively to my subjects. Certain shapes just grab me. Masses of form-land, tree, water, sky-played against hollow, protective man-made forms." Using shape and illusion, Cady engages the viewer's imagination which in turn gives his images power.

This latest body of work explores shape with more variety than ever before, and employs more vivid color. While maintaining his affinity for coastal imagery, both manmade and natural (boats, land formations), Cady has broadened his scope with regard to location, working with images from Florida, New York City, Peru, and Newfoundland in addition to his Maine surroundings. This exhibition features some 15 new paintings including several small canvases mounted to metal backings.

For more than forty years, Cady has been shaping his intricate stretchers by hand, either out of wood or more recently metal, to accentuate a particular view. Silhouetted against the gallery wall, some of Cady's paintings cast actual shadows, imbuing their subjects with a physical presence, while others are flat, floating illusions. Working from his own photographs and sketches, as well as memory, Cady creates precisely edited scenes that explore the power and beauty of light, the drama of space, humor, and solemnity.

"Friendship Sloop Echo Cabin, with Black Sail Cover," is an eccentrically shaped canvas depicting the cabin of a moored Friendship Sloop-a former working sailboat that is now world famous as a recreational cruising boat. The boat is named for Friendship, Maine where it originated and where Cady now lives and works. Though at first arrestingly realistic, Cady's subtle manipulation is evident in the compressed perspective, the abstraction of the scene, and the abrupt cropping of the sail. Another large painting in this exhibition depicts the South Basin of Maine's Mount Katadhin from Chimney Pond up to the Knife's Edge. From a vantage point that seems to be in the middle of the pond, the imposing formation looms above, rendered in such detail that both the base and top of the mountain seem to be equally reachable.

[Image: Sam Cady "Katahdin South Basin, Chimney Pond to Knife Edge" (2009) Oil on shaped canvas, 75 x 68 in.]