You are invited to the Opening Reception Friday, November 3, 5-8pm for “Visions of the Land: Artists Respond to Nature”

Featuring work by: Sandra Dawson, Susan Kraut, Jeff McNutt, Paula Blackwell, Rebecca Crowell, Robin Denevan, Michael Dubina, Didier Nolet, and Joan Holleb. Meet the artists, refreshments served, plentiful parking.

Addington Gallery is proud to present “Visions of the Land”, a group exhibition exploring how artists use the genre of landscape painting and painterly improvisation which incorporates images of the natural world to comment on and connect to the psychological and spiritual states of both the artist and viewer. Traditions of “nature painting” and “landscape” are both honored and subverted in these works, as the artists move through and past ideas of naturalism and representation, entering a territory more subjective and open-ended for the viewer.

The exhibition features recent work by artist Paula Blackwell, whose encaustic paintings evolve organically and offer landscapes that are as much places of contemplation as literal locations; Jeff McNutt, whose work is teeming with life, illustrating the fertility, potency, and tenacity of nature; Joan Holleb, whose elegant images painted on copper offer a vision of the land derived from direct observation, but filtered through an adventuresome approach to materials; Susan Kraut, whose subtle, quiet paintings communicate a quest for honest observation and intimate communication ; Rebecca Crowell, whose expressive yet controlled use of cold wax layers and organic compositions strike a seductive balance between the atmospheric and the concrete; Robin Denevan, whose encaustic paintings evoke the great rivers of the world, providing a bridge to his experience of these exotic locals, and placing them indelibly into our collective imagination; Sandra Dawson, whose images of birds and trees are psychologically loaded and offer sensitive and powerful visual essays on the language of painting, both contemporary and classical: Didier Nolet whose work, beginning with direct experience, quickly takes off into flights of fancy, veering off to both painterly control in the large works, and lush loose draughtsmanship in the small works; Mark Perlman, who’s mastery of the encaustic medium is expressed in action paintings full of powerful mark making; Michael Dubina, who makes tiny, deeply affecting paintings on the inside of matchbook covers, paintings diminutive in scale but great in emotional impact.

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Tags: Addington Gallery, Chicago, Didier Nolet, Jeff McNutt, Joan Holleb, Michael Dubina, Near North Side, Paula Blackwell, Rebecca Crowell, Robin Denevan, Sandra Dawson, Susan Kraut, Visions of the Land: Artists Respond to Nature