The Bowery Gallery in Chelsea is currently
presenting a collection of work by Martha Armstrong for the exhibition East
to West: Recent Paintings. For this show, Armstrong unveils several new oil
paintings of the landscapes of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Tucson, Arizona
where she uses an abstract realist style.
Many of these works feature bright colors and
vivid patterns while others feature cooler colors. For instance, works such as Going,
Going, Gone, Almost Red, and Dusk Colors illustrate forests
where the trees and grass have various shades of green with a couple of bright
orange, pink, or red trees that truly stand out.
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| Going, Going Gone (2014) by Martha Armstrong |
Armstrong effectively captures
mountains and hills that are beautifully reflected in the surrounding rivers
and lakes with images such as with Lake at Mt. Gretna or Pavilion
Series 11. She also illustrates Tucson’s Sombrero Peak at different times
of the day; Sombrero Peak Sun depicts the historic park in the morning
with the sun warmly shining in the midst of dark clouds while Sombrero Peak
I illustrates the park in the mid-afternoon with a pale blue sky with light
softly hitting the hills and trees.
Armstrong compares the subjects of her
landscape paintings to the relationships between characters and settings in
American Literature by saying “If you think about American Literature the
landscape is as important as the people, from Willa Cather, Hemingway, and John
Steinbeck to Wallace Stegner, Norman Maclean, and Marilynne Robinson…not as a
metaphor for something else but as something we are part of.”
At the Bowery Gallery
530 W. 25th St., through Oct. 3. The gallery is open Tue.—Sat. from 11 a.m.
until 6 p.m. There will be an opening reception at the gallery Saturday, Sept.
12 from 3-6 p.m., and Armstrong will give a talk Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 6:30
p.m.
