“For the Love of Nature” Exhibition

440 Gallery

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For the Love of Nature is a three-person exhibition that explores the essential qualities of nature, but on a personal level. Featuring the work of painters Joy Makon, Janet Pedersen and Robin Roi, this show highlights the dynamic interplay that subject and process demonstrates for each artist.

Robin Roi’s still life oil paintings are a departure from her densely packed “narrative patterns”, as she refers to her mixed-media works on paper. These oil paintings represent time spent close to home during the pandemic when on-line Zoom classes were abundant. At the urging of an artist friend, Roi registered for a Zoom oil painting class. Never having worked in oil, Robin says she was excited to try a new medium. She elaborates, “I loved being a novice again. It always brings such a fresh perspective and jolts me out of my ‘groove’.

Janet Pedersen’s recent series of still lives continues with the subject of seashells. Pedersen notes, “I was inspired by a Jane Freilicher painting of oysters I recently saw. I love how she celebrated and arranged her subject, an overhead view of open shells. There are many subtle shifts in tone and structure in a seashell, an exquisite design that called on me to slow down, and look more closely. This is something I have been trying to do in my own daily life.”

Joy Makon’s watercolors of plants and scenes of nature are of subjects that are near and dear to her. “Magnolias” from April, 2021, is a forceful response to the end of winter and the easing up of the pandemic lockdown. The artist explains, “I began painting it in early March when it was still snowy and freezing out. I took my time with the painting because, really, what else was there to do, where else was there to go, during this pandemic lockdown? In the interim, the winter weather gradually eased up and I received two doses of a vaccine. The world began to look a little brighter overall. Today, as I finished this image from Central Park’s Conservatory Garden, the spring day was warm and sunny and the magnolias are once again coming into full bloom. Not a moment too soon.” “Flurry of Activity” from December, 2017, is from a time when the artist’s brother passed away. The butterfly, like Joy’s younger sibling, is fleeting. Makon explains, “Fall had been filled with distractions and I hadn’t painted anything substantial for nearly two months. Working on an unabashedly sappy painting helped improve my mood.”