“Nature’s Splendor–Landscapes: Studio Works” Exhibition

Salmagundi Art Club

[Image: Kathy Anderson "Teton Morning"]

This event has ended.

Salmagundi Club presents Landscapes: Studio Works, an exhibition showcasing over 50 artworks by both member and non-member artists. This year, the annual landscape exhibition is separated to highlight the practice of en plein air and studio works, with this show featuring the latter.

Landscape painting is a prominent genre that has captured the interest of artists and viewers alike for centuries. The tradition of depicting natural scenery lends itself well to self-expression, as a method through which the painter can imbue emotions and spiritual meaning into the elements they choose to portray. In this way, each landscape can be a deeply personal and self-reflective demonstration of the artists’ appreciation for the natural world they observe.

As a result of the luxury of time spent in the studio, the artists were able to illustrate intricate details in the paintings, showing a fine attention to the subtleties and nuances of a scene—each green leaf, cloud in the sky, speck of snow, ocean wave, or breeze across a field. Through a range of styles on display, from impressionism to realism, the works capture the energy and splendor of nature as interpreted by the artist. Upon entering the gallery, visitors are whisked away to a serene escape, from the water’s edge, to the mountains, to open fields. Landscape paintings can encourage, or provide a medium to engage in, a meditative practice. In A Winter Day by Lolly Shera, the viewer’s eye follows the stream gently receding into high grass, and eventually arriving at peaceful blue mountains on the horizon.

Trees are powerful symbols of the passage of time and provide a sensation that translates directly to our psyche, as poetic vessels. This is especially seen in the impressionistic painting of a stoic winter forest, with leafless trees standing tall, quiet and proud in Dying Light by John MacDonald. The Spanish moss draped on the tree branches in Marla Luttrell’s Curtain Call brings forth visions of long languid summer days. Marco Giovanni Vera perfectly frames a distant tranquil seascape and calm coast through a parting of the trees in Hook Mountain, as if looking into the past, or the future.

An exploration of nature’s majesty, the exhibition takes the viewer through a range of emotions. A sense of expansiveness and open possibility lies in Sun Prayer, by Anthony Winters. Ocean Moonrise by Laura Paray marks a moment at the edge of the threshold of transition, ripe with the simultaneity of ending and beginning. In Blaze of Glory, by Paula Holtzclaw, the viewer is dazzled by the glow coming from a vivid sun setting beyond the edges of a march, as the light seems to radiate off of the canvas into the room.