NYAB Event - Sharyn Finnegan “Views from West 9th and Elsewhere”

Sharyn Finnegan “Views from West 9th and Elsewhere”

Blue Mountain Gallery

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A 1971 Finnegan painting showing the cranes on the rising World Trade Center hangs next to her 2013 painting of the cranes atop the current skyscraper at the World Trade Center on a winter’s day. Other images show that expansive view in the rain, on a summer afternoon and at night. Done with great clarity, the particular light in each delineates the geometric forms marching towards the newest New York icon with watchtowers guarding from the sides. Glimpses of bird life and humanity enhance the enormity of the cityscape. The intensity of Finnegan’s observations reveals her emotional connection to what she calls “the wallpaper of my life.”

Some of the other paintings contrast with the gray and ochre of the city. The greenness of the Bronx Botanical Garden and the whiteness of the mountains of Siglufjordur, Iceland refresh (the latter from a 2012 A.I.R . for Finnegan), but they have the same sharp observation and movement deeply inwards. A single self-portrait, her latest in a lifetime of them, is at the center of an eight-panel work which resembles an altar piece, surrounding her with ancestral mothers, both real and divine.

This is Finnegan’s third solo exhibit at the Blue Mountain Gallery, in addition to others at various venues, including the Roswell Museum of Fine Arts, N.M. and the Southern Vermont Art Center. Last year she won a BRIO award from the Bronx Council on the Arts and is the recipient of many A.I.R. awards, including the MacDowell Colony, N.H. and Brisons Veor in Cornwall, U.K. Group shows include The Queen’s Museum, Gray Gallery, NYU, The Butler Institute, OH and the Dishman Museum, TX. She has been on the faculty of Parsons the New School for Design for twenty-six years, has authored monographs in the Woman’s Art Journal and has curated exhibitions of women’s art.