Top: Petria Mitchell, oil, "Salmon Reflections," 48" x 48"
Middle: Tim Allen, oil/dibond panel, "Betula Blues II" (details), 60" x 60"
Bottom: Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley, pastel, "Did you say something?", 20" x 30"

 

 

New Work

Petria Mitchell

Tim Allen

Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley

October 6 - 29, 2006
Opening Reception: Friday, October 6, 5 - 8 PM

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ALLEN, DINICOLA-FAWLEY AND MITCHELL: THREE ARTISTS, THREE VIEWS

Windham Art Gallery is pleased to present a three-person exhibition, NEW WORK: TIM ALLEN, CAROLYN DINICOLA-FAWLEY and PETRIA MITCHELL. The exhibition will run Friday, October 6 through Sunday, October 29 with opening reception on Friday October 6 from 5-8 PM.

Cool blue light reflected through stark, white birch trees, or slender, dark oaks snaking up through green foliage toward a pink-lemony sky typify Tim Allen’s subject matter and his elegant, meticulous portrayal of “treescapes.” Allen, who will exhibit a triptych of five-foot square panels called Betula Blues, as well as a 30” x 38” painting, Jungle Garden—inspired by a grove of oak trees near the Gulf coast of Florida where he grew up—uses photographs as a compositional tool and paints with oil and cold wax on aluminum or birch panels. It is the atmosphere around the trees, and how it is punctuated by the trees’ trunks, branches and leaves, as much how the trees themselves are “shaped by the surrounding atmosphere,” which capture his attention, and ours. Upon close examination, one can see how the ochre sky and delicate, confetti light falling through the trees are made up of individual panes of color, carefully applied, like stained glass, or mosaic tiles. “I love the tension at this boundary,” Allen says, “the two dimensional dance and visual push-pull.”

Fish swim across the surface of Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley’s oil and pastel paintings, navigating literal and metaphoric obstacles; sometimes they are stopped short by wooden planks, or swim through holes in planks, or follow the curve of an arrow. DiNicola-Fawley has long been fascinated by fish and uses them in her work like a private alphabet to express personal, political or psychological meaning. In the large-scale painting, Ten Years to the Meltdown, a solitary fish is surrounded by over-sized numerals as if the fish is a thermal clock and the time, the viewer clearly understands, is running out. She often works using many layers of paint with cold wax and then scratches through the surface to reveal complex color and texture. In Thin, Green Line, another familiar motif of DiNicola-Fawley’s, an ice hut or “bob,” is seen balanced on thin, reflective ice. Ghostly white fish swim in the air above and around the hut, revealing, as DiNicola-Fawley explains, the “danger of the ice. . . and <how> fish lurking below sparks the fear and respect I have always had for the water.”

“I love the shape of trees,” Petria Mitchell says, “and the slope of the land.” Mitchell is well-known for her atmospheric New England landscapes, which convey more a mood and memory of a place than a place itself, and include tranquil, winding rivers; expressive, brushy trees; dark lines of distant mountains; undulating meadows; or an expanse of sky with great, white clouds. Raised in an orchard, and a long-time resident of Vermont, Mitchell’s abstracted landscapes are “compositions of internal places not visited on foot.” Her signature use of bold color, space, line, and visible brush marks reveal her thorough engagement with paint, the “creamy and beautiful” texture of it, and how it can be moved around, or cut through with the end of a paintbrush. “I like being a conductor,” Mitchell explains, “pushing paint around, cutting through it, telling stories that invite people into the picture plane.”

Tim Allen’s work is included in numerous public and private collections; he was one of eleven artists whose work was chosen for a juried exhibition last year at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley's work is in private and public collections throughout the US and has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Connecticut , Massachusetts and Vermont. Petria Mitchell is represented by galleries in Santa Fe, NM, Naples, FL, Concord, NH, Martha’s Vineyard and Williamstown, MA, and at Gallery North Star in Vermont. Her work is in numerous public and private collections across the US.