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September Issue 2006
City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, Features Group Exhibition
City Art Gallery in Columbia, SC, is proud to present a collection of paintings focused on the subject matter of Faces and Figures, from Sept. 1 - 30, 2006. The work comes from several artists affiliated with South Carolina at various stages in their career. The exhibition has a great breadth of interpretations on the complex subject of the human form. The exhibit includes works by Amy Fichter, Bonnie Goldberg, George Hetherington, Randall McKissick, Sylvia Potts, Alex Powers, and Brian Rego.
Amy Fichter received her MFA from USC and is now a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, Stout Campus. Her drawings have a raw strength and sensual intensity rarely seen in contemporary figurative art. She is a master of using color and value in a very harmonic way, as well as grasping the illusion of structural form in drawing. Her models are often in disturbing and difficult postures that convey a very severe state of the human condition.
The free spirit of Bonnie Goldberg is apparent in her drawings of human form. She is noted for her distinctive economy of line and expressive gestures. She is not afraid of using negative space as an expressive element and is very much "to the point". In contrast to Fichter's blatantly rough and meaty figures, Goldberg's are marked by a very particular gracefulness and flow. Goldberg continually attends "About Face," a group of artists that gathers weekly to work from models. She has studied with Alex Powers, also featured in this Exhibit.
George Hetherington is included in this exhibition, whose "personality images" were recently introduced for the first time to City Art. His particular strength is the seemingly accidental marks of color and shape that convey an intense and introspective sense of character. The expressions are often brooding and seem to appeal to the viewer for sympathy. Hetherington's paintings of children are particularly gentle, whereas his other figures show strength, beauty, and disturbance.
Randall McKissick received his fine art training at the Ringling School of Art and Design and has worked as an illustrator for a great part of his career. In comparison to the work of Hetherington and Goldberg, McKissick's impressionistic oil portraits and figures show his love for the subtlety of real light, atmosphere, and color. He has no inhibitions with using simple color planes that flow from one to the other in feathery brushstrokes. McKissick's lush use of oil is particularly pleasant and it is a fortune to have an artist of his caliber in this show.
This exhibition displays for the first time the sculpture of Sylvia Potts. Her work is marked by a unique blend of true-to-life depiction and symbolic, somewhat aboriginal distortion of the human form. She mostly works with clay, which is often finished with a variety of glazes and other materials. Her commonly rough finishes on lush rounded forms are used to make emblematic statements about the motherly, graceful and ancient beauty of the female figure.
Alex Powers (detail)
City Art is proud to display the work of Alex Powers, a long-standing member of the City Art group of exhibiting artists. Powers' drawings and paintings are bright examples of the wide range of possibilities in experimental drawing. His works are usually a coherent blend of charcoal, gouache and pastel. Powers is a superb draughtsman with a unique ability to be very accurate and dramatic with quick and minimal marks. His subject matter is just as diverse as the mediums that he uses, ranging from golf, baseball, and genre scenes to politics, religion and philosophy. His hurried lines are a true inspiration and are representative of a very eclectic individual.
Last but by far not least, the paintings of Brian Rego are a great addition to this show. Rego is currently working towards his MFA degree at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. In his studies and paintings, Rego very often concentrates on geometric color fields and how those interact to build composition and meaning. He has a particular love for color and rich texture in oil. There will be four of his latest figurative studies in this exhibition.
For further information
check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at
803/252-3613 or at (www.cityartonline.com).
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