BERTA WALKER GALLERY
208 Bradford Street • Provincetown • MA 02657
p 508-487-6411 • f 508-487-8794 • bertawalker@bertawalkergallery.com
www.bertawalkergallery.com

FOR PHOTOS PLEASE GO TO OUR MEDIA WEBSITE
bertawalkergallery.com/media
and click on image to download 300 dpi TIFF files
or, please contact Sky Power, Managing Director of the Gallery

RELEASE: UPON RECEIPT: 7/10/2007

FOUR CONTEMPORARY MASTERS OPEN JULY 20

“The Mysterious Creative”
One-person exhibitions for
Elspeth Halvorsen, Robert Henry, Sky Power, Selina Trieff
July 20 – August 5, 2007
Reception to meet the artists Friday, July 20, 7 – 9 pm

ELSPETH HALVORSEN  new constructions
ROBERT HENRY seven grand-scale surrealist triptychs
SKY POWER large abstract paintings
SELINA TRIEFF pencil drawings and large charcoals on paper

Elspeth Halvorsen refers to energy of “the mysterious creative” connected to by many artists as Bespedrel, a Russian word loosely referring to the precarious state that is independent of the artist’s conscious intent, in which there is no limit to vulnerability.  Sky Power refers to it as "a subliminal emotional weather, an inner source that exists under the surface of what can be seen."  Bob Henry describes "that searching, searching your soul, a state of mind that generates a sense of internal movement -- for me, starting in the stomach."  Selina Trieff looks for "an opening to a vulnerability, to exploring my truth with paint -- and the paint seems to express ‘we are one’."

ELSPETH HALVORSEN
“Moonlight Vision”
Mixed media 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/ perspectives in the tradition of Joseph Cornell in which a container becomes the stage for what Boston Globe art critic Cate McQuaid wrote: “Halvorsen constructs boxes from wood and glass; they contain galactic meditations. She balances expansion and containment, liberty and boundaries, filling her work with found objects gathered in surrealist assemblages. Halvorsen’s sculptures range from political commentary to the celebrations of local happenings, such as this year’s 100th Anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Memorial Monument (“To the Monument”, Monument with Fish #1 & #2). Some Incorporate light and music.
The latest assemblages continue to create the sense of miniaturist surrealistic stage sets – or even temples – wherein her repeating symbols of moon, sphere/egg, mirror/reflecting surface, ladders and architectural framing, draw our attention psychologically inward. This is her Tarot deck and each work reflects a different cast of her iconographic tools.
Debbie Forman, Features Editor of the Cape Cod Times, wrote about Halvorsen’s work. “Light is always an active element in Halvorsen’s constructions. She likes the idea of ambiguity and mystery, and her work inspires a myriad of thought. Through her box constructions, the artist forms a bond with the viewer, sparking an array of associations and ideas, which, like the light, reflect back and forth on her work.”
In these new works, Halvorsen has introduced some objects that she’s had for years – an antique wooden bird which hung in Halvorsen’s mother’s lime tree in San Miguel del Allende and parts of old pianos. She also creates miniature paintings used in juxtaposition to the objects employed in these mysterious worlds. Talking about sources of objects, she says “people give me things, even mail them to me”, which she keeps for long periods and utilizes them when they’re called for. Halvorsen, like her mother and grandmother before, and their daughters and her own two daughters, has been making art since she was a very young child. She knew at an early age, she would devote her life to being a serious and professional artist. With the exception of the 50’s and early 60’s when her creative spirit focused on raising her two artist-to-be daughters, Tabitha and Stephanie, she has made art daily. She was instrumental in organizing the much-heralded artists cooperative Rising Tide Gallery in Provincetown.
Raised in Purdy’s, N.Y. (50 miles from NYC in Westchester County), Elspeth and her husband, painter Tony Vevers, moved to Provincetown in 1955, living here year-round until 1964; after that they lived in Provincetown for the summers every year until Tony retired in 1988, and then became year-rounders again. At 77, Halvorsen continues to work daily on her art in her studio/home in Provincetown that was once the home of Mark Rothko.

ROBERT HENRY
“Relationships”
Seven new triptych paintings

   Bob Henry’s new exhibition will delight, surprise and challenge his followers.  This year, Henry has explored the triptych format, producing large and fascinating paintings, 40 x 90” wide. Henry is a 2lst century social-surrealist, and his work is always about human relationships and conditions in society that are usually not quite right.  His paintings engage the viewer in powerful statements of space, gravity and movement, essential elements of painting for Henry, and the building blocks of his art.  They are, in Henry’s own words, “the intended play of opposing forces.”
             Henry works simultaneously on the three paintings which compose each triptych, opening up new ways of working; one painting helps the other, functioning like a jump cut between three film frames.  This process allows him to move between completely different sets of forms and textures without explanation. Composition and subject matter bring the parts together within the unified format of the triptych, often combining various impulses in a single work, much as in poetry or music, where seemingly disparate stanzas or movements are linked together to create a cohesive theme.  Henry’s new paintings are mature opuses only possible by an artist who has completely mastered his medium and can improvise with grace and surety.
            In all of these works there is the ambiguity of environment:  air or water? floating of falling? and often a double imagery, a sort of visual pun/double entendre --  landscape or teeth? (see Elemental Triptych). Herein lies his artistic insight on the human condition:  flux, tension, change, and ultimate vulnerability.  “The political situation contributes to uneasiness.  A lot of my paintings in the last few years have been about being an aggressor, being a victim.”
Art historian Eileen Kennedy observed: 
  Henry appears uncategorizable to me.  He is an artist statesman of our age, much as Picasso was, or Goya, but he does not confront epic conflict between and within nations in the direct way that they did.  He presents the human impulse to harm and heal in the emotional atmosphere, the psychic space that human turbulence creates. His more abstract  works seem to me to be what so much of contemporary art is trying to express, the distillation of emotion, the spiritual and psychic space that the times we are living in have created. Looking at a few of his abstract paintings, I could not help but think of the weight of the world that now bears down on all of us who are conscious or attempting to be. Meeting Bob Henry, for me, is like meeting the gentlest of prizefighters.   He grapples with the heavyweight philosophical concerns of our times.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933, Henry received his BA at Brooklyn College, where he later taught for 30 years.  At Brooklyn, he studied with Ad Reinhardt and Kurt Seligman and in the early 50’s, he spent three years studying with Hans Hofmann in New York and Provincetown.  He has been presented in over 20 one-person exhibitions including in Provincetown’s original East End Gallery and The Group Gallery, as well as in England, Norway, France, and Japan. His paintings are in the collections of Brooklyn College, Neuberger Museum, Pace University, Prudential Insurance Co., the Tucson Museum and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, among others.   He has exhibited with Berta Walker Gallery since its founding in 1989.

SKY POWER
“Inner Landscapes”
large abstract paintings

SKY POWER’s abstract paintings are both bold and delicate, conveying the duality of our common humanity and her singular inner journey.  By adding and removing pigment from 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.”  Sky's work is metaphysical and private, like a developing language or the evolving  chapters spinning out of a self-channeled tale.
Working with challenging juxtapositions which range from near psychedelic color to black and grey tonalities (see Boundless) she succeeds in giving a view into “that window which is about our existence,” as Power describes it, "a place beyond time."  Power’s masterful paintings evoke great emotion through the use of broad fields of intense color and cryptic marks, not unlike Rothko’s  paintings.
In her article for ARTSmedia in 2004, Eileen Kennedy wrote: "Power’s paintings make us look long and again….(The paintings) are at times highly gestural, swirling. Sometimes a colorful shape rests momentarily on a color field suggesting a horizon line, but the suggestiveness goes beyond strict reference to the natural world.  Hers is a world older and deeper than this spinning planet; her work brings us to the edge of a realm before form and human language.”
Whether her inspiration is Provincetown, her native Southwest or her European travels or her Native American heritage, Power’s paintings introduce us to a unique vision that is Power’s alone, “Like a language one has seen but can’t quite recall,” wrote Sue Harrison in the Provncetown Banner. “By dramatizing nature’s horizon, my paintings revel in the expansive sky and turbulent weather so familiar to the plains I grew up on and coastal regions I now embrace.” Art Historian Emma Ross wrote, “Power juxtaposes harmony with chaos, permanence with the ephemeral.  She communicates the sanctity as well as the violence in nature.”
 Born in 1952,Sky Power has lived and worked in Provincetown for over 30 years, arriving in Provincetown in 1976 to launch a horse and carriage business. In addition to that business, and to establishing her studio as an artist, Power also forged a career as a piano tuner on the Cape. She has painted her entire life, studying figure drawing and painting from 1969-1971 with Ed Gothberg at Casper College, Casper Wyoming, with continuing studies at Central Wyoming College, Riverton, WY, and Cornish School of Allied Arts, Seattle, WA.  In Provincetown, she has done extensive printmaking study at the Fine Arts Work Center.  Power has exhibited regularly since 1974 in Washington, D.C., Boston, on the Outer Cape and in Provincetown.  

SELINA TRIEFF
“Drawing the Quest”
twenty-five years of drawing

The exhibition for Selina Trieff at the Berta Walker Gallery will be a delightful surprise for many of her admirers.  It will contain some twenty pencil drawings, charcoals on paper of her "animal farm", as well as two amazing 6’ x 5’ charcoal works on paper, mounted on canvas. The exhibition coincides with, and expands upon, Trieff’s exhibition of large paintings opening at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum the following Friday, July 27.  Many of the pencil drawings were made in preparation for the paintings on view at the Museum.
Talking about Selina Trieff’s six-foot charcoal drawings (to be included in both the Berta Walker Gallery and Provincetown Museum shows) art historian Eileen Kennedy said:  “They move us as only the primal power of black and white can.  They exemplify a philosophy of the Hofmann School of Art that drawing is an art in itself.  These spectacular works truly reveal the ‘soul’ beneath the figures in her juicy-colored ethereal paintings – as if her figures stepped out of their costumes and are revealed in the anima beneath.”  
Trieff is part of a weekly sketching group and draws virtually every day. She feels, as so many great artists do, that drawing is essential to her ability to create good paintings.  In the tradition of great drawings by master painters including Rembrandt, Degas, Cassatt, Van Gogh, Picasso and Goya, Trieff's drawings are masterpieces in and of themselves. This exhibition reveals the level of mastery in her drawings completed over twenty-five years.
“I use drawing to get involved with a feeling,” says Trieff.  In discussing her origins in making the large charcoal drawings, Trieff said: “During a difficult time for me, when a very close friend was dying, I chose to work in black and white and not color, feeling a more intimate connection to my emotions.  Charcoal can be so spontaneous.”  On further thought, Trieff continues, “The intensity of black and white films when I was a kid may have affected me."
The haunting expressions of Trieff’s figures (many autobiographical), and the curious array of animals, are the images that initially confront  the viewer in Selina Trieff’s work.  They bespeak a private quest for the meaning of existence and, address the follies, pretensions and anguish of all human beings. Gratefully, Trieff’s exhibition of drawings and charcoals, gives us yet another unfathomable dimension to the depth and mystery of her oeuvre.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1934, Selina Trieff received her advanced degree in painting from Brooklyn College where she studied with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko.  She later studied with Hans Hofmann in both New York and Provincetown.  Her work is in the collections of many museums and has been exhibited around the world.   A thirty-year overview  of her paintings entitled “Master of the Look” will be presented at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, July 27 - September 2.  The exhibition will be accompanied by a forty-page catalog.