Feb 23rd, 2021 • 6 minute read
Share
Curations with Mel Reese: Time in Color & Light
Click/tap below to copy url
It’s been a few weeks since my last curation. Apologies for the silence––it’s application season for artists (residencies, publications, exhibitions, grants, and fellowships galore!) which means I have been hyper-focused on my own writing these past few weeks. But I missed you all, so I wanted to take a break from the grind and have some curatorial fun!
Back at it!
There are many paintings that, when we look at them, we are instantly transported to a specific time and place––somewhere that calls on a place we have been or a scene that evokes a memory or experience. In order to achieve this magnificent feat, artists utilize their finely-honed skills in crafting light and color to help place us within a specific moment in time. Bright colors? We understand the sun must be shining. Cool, faded colors? Perhaps we are in dusk, that funky time when the sun has already set yet some light remains.
This week I, artist and curator Mel Reese, am bringing together a collection of Art in Res pieces that are all in conversation with understanding time by their strategic and stunning use of color and light. Scroll through the post to see my placement of each piece, as well as how the selected works come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection.
Let’s scroll through this week’s en-light-ening ;) curation together –– happy browsing!
High Noon
Held within the calmness of this scene, we feel as if we’ve entered into a realm frozen in time. Nestled in muted grey tones of Adelberto Ortiz’s Blue Vase, the sky and house are the same color and tone, making us feel as though we have stumbled upon a surreal environment. However, as we peer closer, there are clues of this scene existing within time. The sharp, short shadow of the front door hangover immediately grounds us within reality, within the time where the sun is at its highest point, high noon.
Adalberto tells us about this painting “[which] uses color and light to delineate a simple solitary house. The mood is set with muted warm grays throughout, blending the the house with both sky and foreground emphasizing the quiet isolation of the structure.”
Early Afternoon
Color, light, and shadow are everything in this painting. Horse Cart at Adams Farm by Ella Yang is the picture of scene-setting. Warm tones, long cool shadows, and lush hues combine to place us within the moment this plein air painting was created. We can picture the calmness of a warm early afternoon in the mountains, when the farmers have finished their tasks for the day, avoiding the harsh heat––the horse cart recalling the hours of hard labor that took place earlier in the day.
Ella tells us more about this piece, “I’ll be honest. That small red cart is such eye candy that I could not resist painting it (again). The two huge old trees in the background make equally impressive other “personalities” in the view. It was an idyllic day to paint “en plein air” that day in Southern Vermont.”
Late Afternoon
This stunning painting The Window Where the Wasps Came In by Abbi Kenny seems to glow from within. The bright colors and sharp, harsh shadows instantly places us within the context of a late summer afternoon. The ‘hotness’ of the colors indoors combined with the green lushness of the trees through the open window, we feel fully immersed in the afternoon heat. Feeling like perhaps it’s time for that afternoon coffee or tea!
Early Evening
When I first saw this painting, it resonated so clearly with me. Stillness No. 9 by Igor Sokol is that gorgeous, fleeting moment in the early evening known to every person who has ever lived within a city. Catching reflections of colorful sunsets occurring somewhere beyond your eye-line, but captured in the windows of our neighborhood. A skyscape from all angles.
Sunset
Two scenes of sunsets on the water that could not be more different, though we understand them as both existing within the realm of reality, as scenes we’ve experienced. Jak Ruiz’s Shoot the Freak uses neon-like colors to emphasize a sunset in late summer, hot and vibrant! The striking luminosity of such a vivid color palette brings us right to those moments when the heat of the day is finally starting to break and warm breeze brings the promise of a cooler evening soon to come.
Andrea Caldarise’s No Moon OBX is the coolness of the summer evening storm. The deep orange sun just peeking over the clouds is a hint of the remaining heat from the summer day––heat that is now fuel for the brewing storm. We can feel the powerful breeze as we gaze at this juicy, deep painting. Time to head home.
Dusk
Capturing dusk can be such a challenge––the veil of a settling coolness, just the beginning of darkness––and yet Justin Shull makes it look easy in his Blue Fields. The cool blues and purples with the gash of reds and oranges, of sunset’s final burst of heat, is a winter sunset we have all experienced. That ethereal purple is something so beautiful, so breathtaking that it could only ever come from nature.
Frozen in Time
This painting LIFE by Marguerite Wibaux caught my eye for this curation not for its use of color, but for its inherent use of light to tell a story of a very specific moment in time. Beautifully rendered water droplets on a simple, nowhere and everywhere backdrop. It is only the thoughtful, bending reflections of light that inform us this is water. Yet we understand so much more context with no other information. Water droplets have an ephemeral quality, they will evaporate over time. Knowing this we can assume that this painting is capturing these droplets only moments after they arrived. A moment in time captured, frozen in time, we get to experience these water droplets long after they are gone.
Bringing it Together
Color and light are essential for understanding any contextual painting. This group of Art inRes paintings does a particular great job at using color and light to place us within the context of time, within the context of moment. Bright and vivid hues tell us something different than the muted and dark tones, but each one leads us on a very specific journey that we are more than eager to embrace.
Curated by Mel ReeseVirtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer
About Mel Reese
Melanie Reese is a painter whose works are impressions of nature––essence of lines and shapes, layered sheets of color and form––existing as symbolic formalism. Lines, shapes, colors, and textures are as central to her work as the process of creating them.
She received her B.S. from Skidmore College in 2013. During that time she studied at Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence. She completed an artist residency at Elsewhere Studios in 2013 and went on to receive a Post-Baccalaureate certificate from San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Melanie received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC in May 2017 and attended the Vermont Studio Center residency in November 2017.
Melanie has had solo exhibitions at R&D Studios Bushwood and Suzette LaValle in Brooklyn, NY and has shown in several selected group and juried exhibitions including Post-Appreciation at the Diego Rivera Gallery at San Francisco Art Institute; Play Me A Game at the Skybridge Gallery at Eugene Lang College; Cognitive Dissidence at Ray Smith Studio; and Unicode at SVA Flatiron Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Melanie was on a panel for the “The Entrepreneurial Artist Workshop” at the Tang Museum and received the Award of Excellence from the 58th Long Island Artist Exhibition at the Art League of Long Island. Melanie’s work has been in a number of publications including New American Paintings Northeast Issue 134, New American Painting Featured Artists, Inside Artists, Studio Visit Magazine, Artwork Archive Blog, and Vellum Magazine.
Melanie currently lives in East Hampton, NY with her boyfriend and cat, Miss Puds, who hates all of Mel’s paintings and is always her toughest critic.