Featured Artist
Leonard Ragouzeos
Ink Paintings

"Big Pear," by Leonard Ragouzeos

 

 

Abstraction

July 6 - July 29, 2007
Opening Reception Friday, July 6, 5-8 pm

Carolyn Nelson	Lauren Watrous
Linda Striedieck	Marjorie Sayer
Scott Nelson	Deborah Kaufman

 

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WAG INAUGURATES SIMULTANEOUS GROUP AND FEATURED ARTIST EXHIBITIONS

The Windham Art Gallery is pleased to inaugurate a new exhibition format: many of the usual group exhibitions will now be presented simultaneously with the work of one, featured artist. In July, the back gallery will highlight an annual and well-received group exhibition of non-representational art, Abstract, that, this year, will showcase the work of four of WAG's artist-members: Carolyn Nelson, Scott Nelson and Linda Striedieck, as well as newest member, Marjorie Sayer, and guest artist, Deborah Kaufman. The front gallery will feature work by WAG member and Featured Artist, Leonard Ragouzeos, who, as a long-time abstract artist, has been working for five years with representational subject matter; however, many of these works, much larger than life-size, and executed in black and white, bring an abstract language to familiar figures, faces and still life. Abstract and Leonard Ragouzeos will run July 6-29, with an opening reception on Friday, July 6 from 5-8 PM.

Of his colorful, surrealistic painting for Abstract, Scott Nelson has said, "the painting was directly inspired by the drawing, which is almost 40 years old. However, in the process of translating to a larger format, in a different medium, I found many things changing. . . <including> my visual vocabulary."
"My paintings have always been about exploring relationships," Linda Striedieck explains. She is most interested in how "a visual image can grow in an organic way. . .Growth and change in the natural world, from the smallest element to the vast universe, for me, follow principals that I can’t see but that I can feel." Carolyn Nelson, who has been painting stripes and grids in her most recent work, explores variations on color and form, the complexity of the painting's surface and how she can "manipulate the edges with other color, line or form, a drip here or there as punctuation." Influenced by the work of color field painters, she is intrigued by "the world of the infinite in them. . .<their> soul and mystery."

Newest member, Marjorie Sayer, who has always been interested in drawing the figure, nonetheless does so in an abstracted way. Interested in exploring how to portray the figure in different spatial relationships, she works toward revealing the figure as it relates to light and dark, and the texture and depth of space; she aims for a spontaneity in her work that captures "the essence of the personality." Guest artist, Deborah Kaufman, who exhibits her work extensively in the Monadnock Region, says her subject matter is the interaction of color, shape, texture and line. She builds up layers of paint to create richness and uses brushstrokes to give a sense of movement and to soften edges. Kaufman enjoys, as she says, pushing colors and shapes "against each other so they create a satisfying tension, a fullness of energy on the surface of the canvas."

Leonard Ragouzeos, who will be WAG's first Featured Artist, will exhibit drawings and paintings made with India ink on an archival paper called Yupo. These large-scale black and white works are a movement away from Ragouzeos' earlier and smaller, abstract gouaches. A giant pear, or a large-scale rendering of a man's face, as in the 50" x 76" Architect--in which, ironically, the elderly architect holds his hands up to show a tiny square--transform everyday subject matter into something indicative of a greater, complex and changing world. Ragouzeos chose to work large because he was interested in the thematic and technical challenges this scale would present, and avoids the use of color because black and white is "less adorned, and in some ways more truthful." His depiction of everyday subject matter, like fruit and faces, represent for Ragouzeos the "suggestions of the cycles of life: birth, growth, sustenance and death."

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Leonard Ragouzeos, The Architect, ink on paper, 76" x 50"

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Marjorie Sayer, "Eva Painting," oil, charcoal on paper, 8" x 10"