Vault Series: Small Paintings
Curated by Joan Backes
Upper Vault

 

 

Gordian Knot
2009
Constance Mallinson

 

Vault Series: Small Paintings shows the work of five artists from the United States and Canada. Stanley Lewis and Leslie Bostrom live in the Northeast, Peter Kirby lives in Canada, Lorraine Peltz lives in Chicago, and Constance Mallinson lives in California. The content of their work differs as well as their chosen media — from watercolor to acrylic to oil.

The uniting factor of this show began with the subject of small scale works, as in the title for this show: Vault Series: Small Paintings. However, there are other relationships that exist between the work of these five artists.

 

 

Remembered Conversation, Pink, 2009
2009
Lorraine Peltz
Oil on canvas

 

Leslie Bostrom has contributed two of the watercolor studies she makes for her large scale paintings. These studies stand on their own as paintings. Bostrom has been a bird watcher, or “birder” for fifteen years. Her series: “The Bird Disaster Series” began as a comment on the decline of bird populations but has evolved and broadened into a narrative on bad luck, fate, and death. 

Though working on the opposite and west coast, Constance Mallinson’s contribution to this show also reflects on nature. Here Mallinson has collaged together a tangled mass of decaying natural materials and manmade street detritus, some of the things she collects on her walks in the Southern California suburbs and canyons. Her work addresses the fragility of nature, as well as its rebirth, and our contemporary relationship with the natural world.

Lorraine Peltz’s paintings address issues of both the exterior world and an interior space of dream, desire, and memory. Her chandeliers appear to us as if from a dream, or as apparition, or as some distant recalled memory. She joins the chandelier, something inside a home or elegant interior space with motifs from outdoors such as flowers and starbursts allowing the viewer to experience his or her own fantasy within the painting’s darkened field.

Peter Kirby has based his painting for this Vault Series exhibition on an event that he has regularly experienced in summer. Waeg Day is based on a day at his Waegwalic Club where participants celebrate the pleasures of the summer season with barbecues, games, and relaxation. He has set these people in a contemporary setting while referencing figurative painting of the past.

The work of Stanley Lewis seen here is typical of his drawings and paintings. Lewis regularly paints outdoors on location and this is exactly how he worked for the painting in this show. His technique is gestural, quick, and painterly. And, like Peter Kirby he captures something of the pleasures of the summer season in this work.

— Joan Backes
Curator, Vault Series, NBAM

 

 

Vault Series: Paintings on Paper
Curated by Joan Backes
Lower Vault
 

 

Wooden Female
2009
Sheila Provazza
Oil on paper

Vault Series: Paintings on Paper includes the work of six artists who live and work in Nova Scotia. These artists demonstrate work and concerns that might represent those of artists everywhere. They use traditional media such as watercolor and oil paint as well as new technology including digital images and ink jet paintings.

Although these artists live and work in the Maritimes, similar to our own coast here in New Bedford, the work that they make does not always reflect on the landscape of their region. Would we know that they live in the Maritimes from viewing their work?

Each artist was asked to include a statement about his or her concerns relating to their work on paper for this show.

All but one of these artists was born in one of the Canadian provinces originally. All have relocated to Nova Scotia. One, Sheila Provazza, was an undergraduate at UMass Dartmouth and is from Massachusetts originally.

— Joan Backes
Curator, Vault Series, NBAM