Andrew Haines

Richmond, Indiana

acrylic on panel

acrylic on panel

John Gibson is a native of Massachusetts, born in Boston in 1958. He attended the Rhode Island School of design (where he earned a BFA in 1980), before earning his post-graduate degree from the prestigious master’s program at Yale. Gibson had his first one-man show at the University of Massachusetts in 1984, and he began showing in group exhibitions in the Boston and New York areas in the late 1980s. In the early 1990s Gibson’s paintings began to focus on pyramidal compositions of spheres resembling children’s playground balls, decorated in the manner of colorful soccer balls. Executed in oil on wooden panel, these pieces began to attract generous critical praise for Gibson from the pages of the Boston Globe, the Partisan Review, and the New Yorker, among others. Gibson’s paintings are filled with subtle yet provocative disjunctions, which challenge the viewer’s initial perceptions of the pieces. While these images would seem at first to be fairly simple atmospheric, realistic renderings of colorful balls, a closer examination will reveal that the surfaces of Gibson’s paintings are deeply scored by the artist in geometric patterns that sometimes conform to, and in other instances defy, the outlines of the spheres rendered in paint. An invisible substructure is suggested in these incisions, which also serve to reinforce the physicality of the painting. Some pieces also include incised and/or painted suggestions of shadowy architectural spaces (arches, hallways, shallow niches) in which the balls are placed. The scale of the objects rendered is ultimately unclear: the balls could be of the large, inflatable type, but they alternatively suggest the density of much smaller decorated wooden croquet balls...

graphite on paper

25th Street, by Elise Zoller, 24 x 30 in. oil on panel. Elise Zoller has recently embarked on a series of plein air paintings of sites around Salt Lake City and in the smaller towns of Utah from Hurricane to Huntsville. She has enjoyed meeting people along the road and learning about the history of the state. “Plein air work can be physically demanding, but there is no substitute for working from life. Light and shadow dance in subtle ways a photograph cannot capture. Even the wind and the fragrances it carries inform the work. Scenes come alive when you stand in one place for a few hours. You’ve got to get to know a spot,” Elise says. “While I work, all manner of people come up and talk to me about their towns and their lives. I’ve met a downwinder from Enterprise, pie bakers in Veyo, pony cart...

Pennsylvania Ave, 2019

JERRY BERNECHE Small Town No. 18 Watercolor on Arches 21.5 x 29.25 inches

Meditation on Impermanance