NYAB Event - "Undertone" Exhibition

"Undertone" Exhibition

Cheryl Hazan Gallery

This event has ended.

Cheryl Hazan presents Undertone, a group show exploring the beauty and complexity of expressive, deliberate and subconscious mark making in the paintings of Jason Craighead, Hyunmee Lee, Doug Stone, and Tad Lauritzen Wright.

The dynamic and animated paintings of Jason Craighead are emotionally charged with raw and expressive lines. He has the ability to activate a psychological space in his work that creates its own abstract narrative. Craighead states, "My process is intuitive, emotionally driven mark-making...sensing, feeling, responding to the life that appears, disappears and re-appears in the creation of a work...the poetry of passion, the belief in the heart..." His paintings can be compared to 20thCentury artists such as Cy Twombly. His work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions throughout the Southeastern United States, and is included in many private and public collections throughout the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Flanders Gallery, Raleigh, NC; Broadhurst Gallery, Pinehurst, NC; and Thomas Deans Fine Art in Atlanta, GA. He is a member of the City of Raleigh Arts Commission and chairman of its Art, Education and Collections Committee. He grew up in Florida where he studied art at Gulf Coast Community College and Florida State University.

Hyunmee Lee's paintings echo her own personal and spiritual journey. She contemplates sound, space, and symbols by combining gestural abstraction with references to Korean
calligraphy and Buddhist philosophy. Her work is anchored in 20th Century modern art, but incorporates her Eastern sensibility and past. Her paintings combine intuitive line, monochromatic space and abstract gestures to create a confident and striking space. There is a weighted and quiet energy in her work; she has described her paintings as being a "...step toward 'Big Mind,' the Buddhist concept of meditation resulting in a Zen-like form of enlightenment and connectedness to nature and the universe." Hyunmee Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. She graduated with a BFA in painting from Hong-Ik University, Korea and holds an MFA from Sydney College of Arts, Australia. She has had solo exhibitions at the Woodbury Art Museum in Utah; Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah; Bonython-Meodemore Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Julie Nester Gallery, Park City, Utah; Nüart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia; and Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah. Hyunmee Lee is a professor of art at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah.

The complex and vibrant paintings and mixed media work of Doug Stone articulate a layered and abstract narrative. Enveloped together are insinuating drips of paint, broad areas of color, descriptive words and expressive lines. Stone brings together the metaphysical, gesture, and emotion with a raw and direct intention. Personal identity, notions of place and encoded language are all investigated in these powerful works. He has been included in exhibitions at Gallery One, Toronto, Ontario; Ameringer/Avad Fine Art, New York City; Ader Tajan, Paris, France; and Bennington College, Vermont. In 1991 he attended the Triangle Artists Workshop in New York. He holds a BFA from the University of Guelph, Ontario. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

Tad Lauritzen Wright incorporates pop culture, art history, and naïveté into his playful mixed media paintings. His imagery is both accessible and complex. Contour line drawings, expressive characters, grids of color, and writings from his studio are brought together in a deliberate way while maintaining the integrity and casual demeanor of a sketchbook. Relating to the Southern Visionary art tradition, Wright's work combines collage techniques with layered automatic type drawings and writings onto canvas, together with controlled areas of paint. Using recognizable images as an anchor, he considers his pieces experiments in abstraction. He has had solo exhibitions at Elder Gallery, Nebraska; Koelsch Gallery, Texas; Julie Baker Gallery, California; and David Lusk Gallery, Tennessee. He has been awarded residencies at the Tamarind Institute and Vermont Studio Center. His work is in many collections, including Tamarind Printmaking Institute, Arkansas Art Center, Brooks Museum, and Katonah Museum of Art. He holds an MFA from the Memphis College of Art and a BFA from Nebraska Wesleyan University.