Six
Berta
Walker is pleased to welcome Polly Burnell • Arthur Cohen • Elspeth Halvorsen •
Thom Mc Canna • Sky Power •
Peter Watts to the family of
High resolution photos for each artist are available to the media and for reference by downloading
http://www.bertawalker.com/media
POLLY BURNELL paintings & porcelain sculpture
Painter
POLLY BURNELL introduces in this
exhibition a collection of small, hand painted porcelain sculptures created
over the past two years. These narrative
sculptures sprang from the “little worlds” she has been painting
two-dimensionally for many years. “My painting and sculpture have fed each
other - for
example, the majolica glazing technique
I use draws on a painter’s technique of thinly applied color pigment,” she
explained.
“As a kid I did giant
narrative drawings filled with stick figures with horses, and foxes and other
animals where I found a strong association with the animals pursued,” she
shared. Burnell’s work has always been
whimsical and even a little sardonic, perhaps a variation on a Grimm Fairy tale
with a modern twist. And here in these exquisitely executed story sculptures,
predominantly featuring domestic/farm animals, she gives us a tale in the
round, leading us to a surprise and delightful back story . On the front of one sculpture, for example,
we meet m a hunter and his dog, (and perhaps a tiny village) and in the back,
we are invited into the hiding place of the rabbit. “Art is a by-product of our
lives,” Burnell feels. And thus the story sculptures usually include a darker side embedded in her
narratives. Like other artists in this
community, and across the country and the world, Burnell was greatly impacted
by September 11 attack
“My animals are always heroes and represent purity of spirit,”
she explained. “People are polluted by
comparison.” Considering animals as a
serious subject and one from whom we humans can learn important lessons, is a
long tradition followed by artists worldwide for centuries. Surprise, delight, and contemplation are all
offered in these beautiful works.
Burnell has lived and worked in
ARTHUR
COHEN, BayScapes
& “concert miniatures” paintings
Internationally
renowned painter ARTHUR COHEN is a
virtuoso, a master of just when
the last note of a
painting is complete, and Cohen, now 76,
has been painting
Cohen’s sweeping panoramas of
This exhibition also treats us to a
small collection of miniature paintings focusing on concerts performed by his
wife Elizabeth, an
internationally acclaimed concert pianist, and including such other important
performers such as Blair Resika.
ELSPETH HALVORSEN, box constructions
Viewing
ELSPETH HALVORSEN’s box
constructions is a lot like a walk in the moonlight. What we know – or think – to be true in the
hard brightness of daytime reality dissolves into an amorphous space of
multiple possibilities and perspectives. Describing these constructions Boston
Globe art critic McQuaid wrote “a container becomes the state for an
insinuating abstract narrative”.
Halvorsen’s work is often about her artistic response to global and
personal events, whether
Halvorsen was instrumental in
organizing the much-heralded cooperative Rising
Tide Gallery, and is not only a specially talented sculptor, but is the
wife and mother the unique Vevers family of artists: her husband,
painter Tony Vevers and daughters, artist Tabitha Vevers and filmmaker
Stephanie Vevers. Recently celebrating her 75th
Birthday, Halvorsen has worked and lived in
50
years.
High resolution photos for each artist are available to the media and for reference by downloading
http://www.bertawalker.com/media
THOMAS
MC CANNA, large
porcelain sculptures
THOMAS MCCANNA’s technically
masterful &dazzling porcelain sculptures are directly descendent from 18th
century European Meissen porcelain animals.
Utilizing the same classic materials as his earlier European
counterparts who finally broke the code of Chinese porcelain making, McCanna has created
naturalistic animal sculptures that
reflect their symbolic purity and moral strength. Combined with larger-than-life flowers that
symbolize – in the Victorian language
of
flowers – discreet qualities or emotions (a lily represents “purity,” an iris,
“message,” sunflower,
“haughtiness”), McCanna has created a body of
work that reflects both his self-described “love of the sensuality
of the decorative” with an abiding moral
consciousness.
This body of work represents what
McCanna refers to as the end of a “Mourning of America.” His series of eight wall pieces represent a
narrative sequence of September 11th (i.e., “The Tower Fell”) through the
depiction of bovines with broken painted tiles on their backs. Another sculpture depicts a large bovine
with a heavily weighted sunflower on her back, symbolic of what McCanna’s calls
“the haughtiness of this country.” Another sculpture takes the form of a gutted
chicken and is titled “Fowl Bush”. The surfaces vary. They are pale and ethereal, repeatedly
fired with a salt glaze to give a dry-encrusted look, and to emphasize the
powerful forms stand on gold-gilded cages as the sculptural base. Others are
collaborations with artists Polly Burnell and Bruce Winn, whose narrative
painting and fluid patterning, respectively, add beautiful pure surface colors
to other works.
McCanna’s brilliant talents focus
on ancient cultural traditions where moral choice is embedded in art and, even,
games (i.e., the Pakistani game of “Snakes and Ladders” from which McCanna has
borrowed). French artist Yves Klein, a
favorite of McCanna’s, encapsulates McCanna’s feelings about the purpose of
art: “…to
reawaken the capacities of personal responsibility, and to make the attainment
of higher, spiritual, and immaterial qualities, rather than (the production of)
ever greater quantities, the goal of human activity.” A complex task to meld high artistry with
such powerful symbolism, McCanna is never didactic, and offers total awareness
of how to balance both.
Thomas Mc Canna received several earlier
exhibitions at
High resolution photos for each artist are available to the media and for reference by downloading
http://www.bertawalker.com/media
SKY
POWER oil & acrylic abstract paintings
SKY
POWER’s
abstract paintings are both bold and delicate, conveying the duality of
humankind and her individual inner journey.
By removing pigment from monochromatic surfaces, or sanding through
layers of color, even tearing off textured areas of paint, then reintroducing the
pigment as collage, she relates an emotional aesthetic that embraces the
paradox of our existence. Writing
recently of her work in the Cape Cod
Times, Andre Van Der Wende said:
“…It’s nice to enjoy (Sky Power’s paintings) for what they are: a beautiful succinct and fluid discourse on
color and abstract painting… they all have a marked simplicity and strong
direct presence.”
Combined with an uncanny ability to compose
scenes that transform surface
reality into a type of spiritual alter ego, Power’s vision elevates
abstraction to perhaps its earliest origins –
that of a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds. As Power explains, her “origin is always an
inner source… To exist under the surface of what can be seen, that is where I
am most comfortable.” Whether her
inspiration is
Sky Power has lived and worked in
PETER
WATTS landscape paintings
The
paintings of PETER WATTS, in the words of the artist, “condense the richness
of the landscape
of Wellfleet,” where he has lived for over forty years. But, “at the same time as I have absorbed
this landscape and considered its every nuance of light, and change of
topography or weather,” my daily experience fuses with memories and
dreams.” As art critic Margaret
Sheffield noted,
High resolution photos for each artist: http://www.bertawalker.com/media