The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a new and wonderful exhibition of small works on Saturday, November 17th. Fourteen artists will fill the gallery with tremendous talent and diversity. Together they create a dynamic show of sculptures, paintings, and mixed media works, executed in small scale, from detailed realism to abstract and everything in between.

Some of the artists are familiar friends, having shown at the gallery before, while others are exciting new introductions. From as far as San Francisco to as near as Kent, they come together with great energy and imagination:

Carol Anthony, David Eddy, Julia Fosson
Ingrid Freidenbergs, Alexandra Mazzeo, Bradford McDougall
Tjasa Owen, Ragella Rourke, Bjorn Runquist, David Skora
James Swainbank, Patricia Traub, Martha Wakeman, Judith Wyer

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a new exhibition on Saturday, October 13th. It will feature the sculptures of Joy Brown, along with paintings by three other artists: Kathryn Frund, Joan Griswold, and Nora Sturges.

JOY BROWN’s clay people have emerged again from her CT kiln, bursting with emotion and heart-felt humor. They are as fascinating as their week-long, wood-burning process, each with a unique firing and spirit. With thirty years of shows in the US, Europe and Asia, Brown continues to surprise and delight. Her many rave reviews, including the International Herald Tribune, describe her works as “marvelous pieces”, “deeply beautiful” and “irresistible”.

KATHRYN FRUND’s landscapes are painted on wood panels and collaged with old property deeds and surveys that connect us to the land she depicts. Her textural, abstracted paintings are beautiful meditations on nature, mindful of the past and present. For fourteen years she has had numerous shows in Boston and NY, with strong reviews including The New York Times. She resides in CT.

JOAN GRISWOLD is a highly accomplished painter from Massachusetts with many shows and awards since 1986. Her warm, inviting interiors have been described as “portraits without people”, as they feel to have been occupied only moments before. With a strong play of light and shadow, they have been compared with Edward Hopper’s, as they evoke a similar emotion from a simple depiction of place.

NORA STURGES is an extraordinary painter. Her works are little gems, small scenes that stretch beyond the limits of reality. They are poetic and surreal, dreamlike with odd juxtapositions. They are gorgeously painted with a precision and style that recalls the Renaissance, but harkens an exciting, new vision. Sturges has had many shows in CT and in Baltimore where she lives.

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a beautiful exhibition on Saturday, September 8th. Three remarkable painters will be featured, Stephen Coyle, Kirill Doron, and Suzanne Howes-Stevens, along with one wonderful sculptor, Anne Huibregtse.

STEPHEN COYLE was well reviewed in ARTnews as “a master of making the familiar appear unfamiliar”. His banal subjects, houses and highways, have a bewitching stillness and a sense of mystery. They seem stopped in time. Coyle clearly loves to paint; his surfaces are scraped, stroked and layered with fluid pleasure. Since 1982 he has shown extensively in NY, CA, and New England.

KIRILL DORON, a Russian artist who emigrated here in 1981, has shown in this gallery for seventeen years. The New York Times devoted a full-page to his work, calling him a “magic realist”. His paintings are indeed magical, beautifully rendered with staggering realism and glowing light. His still life subjects are commonplace: old chairs, tin cans, dusty crates, dried flowers, all painted in weathered splendor!

SUZANNE HOWES-STEVENS holds a long list of shows and awards since 1973. Her landscapes of New England are of “humble beauty and silent regeneration”. She paints these scenes with intense clarity in transparent layers of oils that drip and flow, much like her waterways. Underlying the paint are maps that she imbeds in each canvas, seeing them as “metaphors for our connection to the earth and our journeys across it”.

ANNE HUIBREGTSE is a fabulous sculptor whose weighty subject is the cow. “My work is about cows and it is not about cows”, she states. “I play with time, perspective and changing point of view. . .” In fact her bronze cows are graceful and lyrical and beautifully colored in deep, rich patinas. Since 1991 she has had numerous shows and in 2000 completed a great commission in Wassaic, NY for the MTA/Arts for Transit.

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a new exhibition on Saturday, August 4th. Full of texture and color, it features three powerful painters working in different media. Two are from New York State: Diane Brawarsky and Marguerite Takvorian-Holmes. William Thomson is from Litchfield County, Connecticut.

DIANE BRAWARSKY creates her mixed media paintings from a studio filled with found objects, paper, canvas and paint. Her works of primitive figures are collaged from small, quirky objects and painted in vivid patchworks of color. They are collections of feelings and memories pieced together like splendid quilts. A graduate of NYU and a recipient of an NEA Grant, Brawarsky has had numerous shows in NY and CT, and an exhibition in London.

MARGUERITE TAKVORIAN-HOLMES paints bold, gestural landscapes in oils with a strong play of light and shadow. They are rough and romantic, lush and spontaneous, quiet and turbulent. Her large-scale works are as strong as they are intimate, each a rhythmic celebration of nature. A part-time resident of France, Takvorian-Holmes draws from her visual surroundings here and abroad. Since 1976, she has exhibited her work throughout the U.S. and in London as well.

WILLIAM THOMSON is an extraordinary painter with fifty years of shows behind him and works in museum collections. A true original, he paints with a synthesis of old master and contemporary ideas, brought together in stunning harmony. His subjects, from portraits to nature, are as varied as his inventive techniques, a combination of oils, acrylics, egg tempera, alkyd, wax, etc. Thomson is a dynamo, forever pushing the limits of his own enormous talent.

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a new exhibition on Saturday, June 30th, featuring three exceptional, realist painters: Pamela Moore of NYC, Patty Mullins of Litchfield County, CT, and Laura Von Rosk of NYS.

PAMELA MOORE’s work is a mix of diverse yet harmonious methods. She combines painting, etching, photography and collage with mastery in each medium. Her imagery comes from many sources: nature, poetry, music, maps, textiles, memories, etc. In her own words, she seeks to “depict personal events giving a path into universal places”. Moore has had numerous shows, awards, commissions, and works in public collections, the Smithsonian and Lincoln Center among them. She is one of eight artists chosen worldwide to participate in a commemorative show in Hiroshima, Japan this summer.

PATTY MULLINS, in her artist statement, writes, “I paint the immediate, visible elements of my world to record my existence in this place at this point in time; . . .but the paintings are as much about color and texture as they are about the objects themselves.” The objects are commonplace: an empty chair, hand tools, paints, etc.; the colors are wonderfully muted and subtle. Her other subject is herself, and in each of her amazing portraits, she is soulful, strong, and phenomenally real. Mullins has shown prestigiously since 1999, most recently at the Edward Hopper House Art Center.

LAURA VON ROSK is a painter of mysterious landscapes on small wooden panels. They are gorgeous scenes that lead back quietly into unknown horizons. “I want the space to feel real”, she says, “but I also like the tension created by what is really quirky, awkward, maybe even impossible.” Her surreal places are beautifully lit in warm colors and meticulously detailed. Since 1989, Von Rosk has had many shows and awards, among them a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and four Yaddo fellowships.

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, opens a new exhibition on Saturday, May 26th. "Connect / Disconnect" is an intriguing show of four accomplished artists.

ROBERT CRONIN's canvases are wonderful narratives of people in curious relationships. They are filled with tender sentiments, sometimes embracing and humorous, lonesome or mysterious. Painted with sophisticated simplicity, they are strong and direct. Cronin is a CT artist with many awards, exhibitions, and collections: the Brooklyn Museum, National Academy, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and others.

LISBETH FIRMIN was honored last month with a NYS Foundation for the Arts fellowship in printmaking. She is a master in her field. Her monotypes are dramatically bold, some in black and white, others with added punches of color. They depict transient moments, pedestrians blurred in passing. Drawn in deep perspective, they capture the pace and dark beauty of New York, the city she loves.

BENJAMIN LONG has a painting style truly unique. Plants are his primary subject, but his go beyond botanical. They are inventive, seductive, and often entwined with environmental commentary. In oils, acrylics, gold leaf, and other mixed media, the effect is provocative and lush. Long is from Philadelphia and holds an extensive list of shows and awards since 1984.

MICHAEL PILON is a strong force and his abstract sculptures are beautiful. Given the found chunks of raw metals from which they originate, they are surprisingly graceful. Pilon is a master from NY, having worked for many years at Tallix foundry with some of the most renowned sculptors. He has received rave reviews from The NY Times and other publications for works that demand attention.

 

 

The Bachelier Cardonsky Gallery in Kent, CT, joyfully celebrates the arrival of spring and the start of its nineteenth year on April 21st. “What’s Cooking?” is an energetic exhibition of fifteen artists, a view from the kitchen full of texture, color, and movement

In all its variations, the show is a menagerie of wonderful tastes in two and three dimensions. Paintings, works on paper, and sculptures fill the gallery in delightful rhythms, with wit and soaring spirits. It’s a fabulous feast.

The list of artists is both new and familiar. Some are highly accomplished with numerous exhibitions, in museum and private collections; others are bright, rising stars. They come together in Kent from different states: Illinois, New Mexico, Maine, New York, and Connecticut. From super real to abstract and everything in between, their styles simmer in gorgeous harmony. They are each extraordinary:

CAROL ANTHONY, COLLEEN COX, CLAUDIA DEMONTE
KIRILL DORON, DEAN FISHER, BARBARA GROSSMAN, CAROLINE HARMAN
ANNE HUIBREGTSE, TINA INGRAHAM, TOMMY SIMPSON, KATHERINE SPITZHOFF
ROGER VAN DAMME, STEVEN WHINFIELD, JUDITH WYER, LAURI ZARIN