NYAB Event - Allison Stewart "Sign and Flow"

Allison Stewart "Sign and Flow"

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

This event has ended.

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce Sign and Flow, a solo exhibition of oil on canvas works by Allison Stewart.

A long time resident of Louisiana, Allison Stewart's work is a biologist's meditation on the region. Through sticks of graphite, layers of pigment, glazes and varnish, Stewart renders ephemeral, organic forms that haunt and hint at the history of the coastline. Black rivers and swampy vascular systems are the result of Stewart's millings through the nature of our relationship with nature: the negotiations, the neglect, the tantrums and the tenderness. A trained biologist, Stewart takes from the ancient tradition that began with the question, "how does this work," and fuels her tributaries of wondering. Her method of working on several canvases simultaneously takes curiosity and spreads it out, flattens and layers it until it floats with water logged ginkgo leaves wrapped in tempests and spills, the fortune and misfortune that make up our mystery. Nature and art are a loaded duo and often handled as if by one inexperienced with firearms. But Stewart is not bandying concepts, she is working through them. Commenting on her own work she says: "I am a part of a thirty thousand year old tradition of making marks on a surface. Painting is a means to help me recognize that we are a part of an interconnected web of life that ultimately we cannot dominate."