Trish Townes: “Let This Be America”
January 3 - February 3, 2019
Opening reception: Sunday, January 6, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
440 Gallery is pleased to present “Let This Be America,” a solo exhibition of abstract paintings by Trish Townes. This is Townes’s first show at the Gallery and includes work from 2017 and 2018.
Townes’s paintings are based on designs culled from various world cultures with a presence in the USA. She was inspired to start on this path by an exhibition she saw in her home state of North Carolina in the summer of 2001. That show was of art and artifacts from Islamic cultures. Townes explains, “I began with designs from the Arabic and Islamic worlds because of the beauty and wealth of art from these groups, and because Arabic and Islamic peoples have been ostracized of late.” The works are on transparent mylar sheets. Both sides are painted with designs, and one side is at least partially painted in the red, white, and blue of the American flag.
In this show she includes designs based on Islamic, Chinese, Tibetan, East Indian, Nigerian, and Malian cultures. Her hope is that showing harmonious composition of the different designs may inspire people to work and live peacefully together as well.
An MFA graduate of UNC-Greensboro, Townes currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has participated in several artist residencies, including those at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, The Fine Arts Work Center, and an upcoming residency at MASS MoCA in the winter of 2019. When she is not searching through design books, she paints figurative works of her friends and family.
Project Space: “The Nature of Things”
Janet Pedersen’s newest works on paper, Seated Model 1 and Seated Model 2 began as simple gestural charcoal drawings from a live model. Pedersen goes on to redefine the figure in an imagined space by developing the drawings with the addition of acrylic gouache, collage and mark making. The end results are pieces that revel in the female form as an emotionally-charged element within energized environ-ments.
Susan Greenstein’s plein air water-colors were painted during a memorable summer spent in Anghiari, Italy. Through her intuitive, distinctive point-of-view, Greenstein explores the unique quality of light found in the Italian countryside. Her palette of colors and brushstrokes compliments the textures in buildings and plant life in a most beautiful way, whether in a Tuscan street scene or in familiar New York City urbanscapes.
For over a year, Jo-Ann Acey has been returning to her Winter Trees series, a predominately monochromatic collection of works on paper rendered in charcoal, pastel and graphite. Working with a visual structure of stark contrasts within positive and negative spaces, Acey reveals her vision of the tree as a symbol of strength, change and gesture. Acey’s trees allude to movement and grace as is often associated with dance and music, all while implying that the surface we see also has a counterpart in what lies directly below.