May 22 - June 16, 2007

Main Gallery

Andrea Packard &
Martha Armstrong

Exhibition Information

Project Room

Celia Reisman

Exhibition Information

Opening Reception for both exhibitions:

Tuesday, May 22, 6-8 PM

Please join The Painting Center this coming Tuesday for the opening reception for Andrea Packard and Martha Armstrong in the Main Gallery and Celia Reisman in the Project Room.

In varying ways, Andrea Packard, Martha Armstrong, and Celia Reisman explore the unexpected poetry of the domestic and natural worlds. Synthesizing observation, memory, and imagination, they share an interest in creating works that prompt both visual inquiry and reverie.

Andrea Packard’s landscapes and domestic scenes explore the richness and simultaneity of memory, desire, and perception. Her works harmonize a fidelity to visual perception with a love of abstract improvisation. She develops striking imagery and relationships through combining handmade and painted paper with fragments of woodcuts, etchings, and fabric. Her varied textures, complex compositions, and saturated color are at once painterly and attentive to the expressive contrasts inherent in collage practice.

Martha Armstrong’s painterly abstractions from the landscape have won acclaim for their inventiveness and verve. Lilly Wei wrote in 2003, “Armstrong's vision is direct, purposeful but not laconic, a quietly expansive and joyful interpretation of an American landscape that veers between the representational and the less so.” In 2005, Jonathan Goodman wrote “There is always an exploratory energy within Armstrong's art. She consistently investigates the landscape with expressive gestures whose vibrancy engages her audience with intelligence and energy.”

Celia Reisman's intimate gouache paintings and easel size oil paintings depict altered views of the domestic landscape. Her paintings explore the relationship between memory and perception, where real and imaginary views of the everyday world transform the familiar into fiction. Through her use of heightened color and distortion of space and perspective, the paintings display gentle, complex puzzles that slowly reveal their mysteries.

We hope to see you there!