In its new Lower East Side location, the Freight + Volume gallery is presenting a collection of work by Maria Walker for the show Trees Breeze Green with the title of the show coming from a poem she wrote. For this show, Walker presents several intriguing works of art where she uses wooden boards to created uniquely shaped and stretched out backdrops that she covers with acrylic paintings.
One might assume that Walker worked often with light color for the first four months of the year because her piece for May only includes small glimmers of golden paint. May depicts a large pond practically dominating the image with several violet, blue, and red shapes coming from the sides and one of them closely resembling a fish.
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| September (2014) by Maria Walker |
Not that much paint can be seen in July which features a stroke of gray paint down the center. The gray is covered with turquoise which eventually veers off to the side to form a small head, possibly of some type of insect, as there are many in the summertime. The dominant color is purple of which there are different shades that overlap. The color starts to come back in September with round crimson shapes emerging from the top and left sides as well as shades of blue, green, and deep yellow possibly capturing the changing color of the leaves on the trees for Autumn. In the upper-left corner an outline of a horse can be seen.
Walker also includes works that reflect her experience of living in Brooklyn. For instance, she observes the scene of her daily commute in Heading Home on Atlantic that features a wooden triangular cut-out depicting a car on the road as she travels home at the peak of sunset with the warm, orange background, and a small, pink triangle emerging from under the painting illustrating the falling sun.
Also of note is Walker’s window series where she draws inspiration from actual windows inside her studio, in her home, or in her mother’s or sister’s homes. The windows represent something we look through and look at, relationships between spatial and perspective views, and the quality of light arriving to the eye from a distance. Notable works in this series include Dawn, featuring two wooden boards covered in white acrylic and gesso, and Ohio Living Room With Trees featuring a zigzag pattern of tree branches and leaves.
At Freight+Volume, 97 Allen St., through Nov. 4. The gallery is open Tues.—Sat. from 11 a.m.—6 p.m.
