From Field Sketch to Finished Work

Date: January 15, 2011-March 13, 2011
Location: Kaaterskill Fine Arts, Route 23A, Main Street, Hunter, NY
Hours: Wednesday-Friday 10 am - 5 pm, Saturday 10 am – 7 pm, Sunday 1 pm – 5 pm.
Information: 518 263 2060
Email: gallery@catskillmtn.org

A group of four Catskill Region artists who generally paint from Artists' Rock to Platte Clove to Olana to Kaaterskill Falls travelled in the spring of 2010 to paint on location in the beautiful hilltown of Barga, a medieval walled city about 20 miles north of Lucca, Italy. They brought back with them a range of sketches in pencil, oil and pastel. These sketches then became the foundation for finished works of art, which will be exhibited at the Kaaterskill Gallery through March 13, 2011. The four exhibitors include some of the Catskill Region's most beloved landscape painters: Mara Lehmann from Haines Falls, Michelle Moran from Woodstock, Carol Slutzky-Tenerowicz from Elka Park and Marianne Tully from Stone Ridge.

There are two intriguing aspects of this exhibit -- the first is the landscapes themselves from a part of the world that is very different from the Hudson Valley, and the other is the window that the sketches may open on the artistic process itself. Visitors to the gallery will be able to see some of the plein air sketches right next to the finished pieces, giving the viewer a firsthand experience of the choices the artists have made in the use of light and color, as well as the composition. There is also an opportunity to see the same general panorama interpreted by the artists, each in her own style and approach.
All four exhibitors have painted together for over five years and are a part of the Hudson River Artists Guild, a group of local plein air landscape artists who paint as a group on a regular basis.

A distinctive feature of the work of the Hudson River Artists Guild is the dedication the group has to plein air painting, as they lug their equipment over the trails and scramble up and down the rocks to find the waterfalls, trees, and distant hills that offer themselves to the unique vision of the artist. When plein air painting, the artist values the immediacy of the experience, the spontaneity of the strokes, and the rich detail offered to the imagination of the artist. The artist by necessity abstracts and interprets the scene on location as well as back in the studio, and this too is part of the process of creating a finished painting. This process was at work in the sketches and paintings in this exhibit as well.

Bella Tuscany: From Field Sketch to Finished Work will continue through March 13, 2011.

Image: "Sunburst over Barga Hillside," by Mara Lehmann