Mia de Bethune and Antonio Alvarez Sept 4 - 28
Opening Reception Sunday Sept 7 2-5pm
Mia de Bethune: String Theory
String Theory is a continued exploration of the intersecting vocabulary of paint and fiber. Drawing inspiration from fiber art pioneers Sheila Hicks and Ed Rossbach, Mia de Bethune builds on earlier work of woven paintings. Constructed and deconstructed, structured and chaotic, she has made a collection of paintings, weavings, and other objects that explore the tension between line and fluidity and the myriad ways in which weaving can be used to solve problems: visual, tangible, and otherwise.
Image: de Bethune, String Theory (detail) Strings. Bead and Acrylic.
Antonio Alvarez:
Hoi Polloi
A painter paints in spite of himself, out of necessity for his spirit to survive gracefully and without regrets. There is not a worse painting than the one that was thought of but never executed.
I paint with acrylics, since they dry very quickly. At my age, there is no time to wait for the oil colors to dry. I was fortunate to have met Antoni Tapies (as I was restoring one of his paintings) and during our several meetings had an opportunity to talk about painting. I was an admirer of his works, which belong to the “Matteristic School” of painting. This is the aspect that I am now exploring with my works: pigments “manipulated” by the artist while a portion of the painting’s surface is left for the matter (in this case acrylic pigments) to behave as their nature require. The results are splendidly beautiful and surprising, and I cannot get enough of it.
Image: Alvarez, Early Morning, Acrylic on Canvas, 30 x 24