Colin Brant @ Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY - People of the Forest

Colin Brant: People of the Forest 
Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY 
February 10 – March 18, 2018

COLIN BRANT

Owl #3, 2016  

Oil on canvas, 20 x 36 inches

Courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson

When is the familiar unfamiliar? Colin Brant’s paintings of landscapes, birds and animals register with recognition, but unfold through improvisation and memory.

The mystic concentration of Nabis like Bonnard is inflected with the joy and color of the Fauves. With jungle cats and unblinking owls, the specter of the Douanier Rousseau lurks nearby. Landscape is refracted for effects both empathic and naïve, distant and interior. The tension between passages of loose-limbed brushwork and precisely calculated color harmonies, even a carefully detailed bird in a forest of blurs and veils, induces the dreamlike focus of a slow-motion nature documentary. 

In these realms of foliage and camouflage, a space is built with paint for a journey of discovery and delight.

COLIN BRANT (born 1965) received a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1987 and an MFA from The University of Iowa in 1995. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting in 2002 and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1998. He lives and works in North Bennington, Vermont.

JEFF BAILEY GALLERY
127 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
www.baileygallery.com

Ruby Palmer @ Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY

Ruby Palmer
Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY
February 10 – March 18, 2018

RUBY PALMER

Blue Lines, 2016

Painted basswood on support, 21 x 12 inches

Courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson

Jeff Bailey Gallery presents an exhibition of new work by RUBY PALMER.

Ruby Palmer’s constructions swivel easily from overhead to underfoot, from aerial perspective to crystal lattice, branching trees or forest floor. They are arrangements that trouble the distinction between painting and object, their aggregate structure creating a boardwalk between the two.

Strips of painted basswood stack and fan like dominoes, compounding their flatness. Closely layered planes seem to tunnel downward and expand outward. Infinitely suggestive, a scaffold for association, they summon leaf forms, fireworks, minerals, pinwheels, sketches for fantastic architecture.

RUBY PALMER (born 1969) received a BA in Painting from Hampshire College in 1992 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2000. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Campsite: Hudson Valley Artists 2016, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz, NY. She received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 1999. She lives and works in Rhinecliff, New York.

JEFF BAILEY GALLERY
127 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
www.baileygallery.com

Lonnie Holley at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY - Assemblages and Drawings

Lonnie Holley: Assemblages and Drawings
Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY
June 24 – August 6, 2010

Jeff Bailey Gallery presents Lonnie Holley: Assemblages and Drawings. Lonnie Holley, a self-taught artist, is a sixty year old native Alabamian whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. This is Lonnie Holley’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in New York in sixteen years.

Lonnie Holley’s unique combinations of found materials and everyday detritus result in mysterious and powerful objects. They reference spirituality, African American art forms and history, nature, and family relationships. Simultaneously, the visual impact of Holley’s work invites comparisons to the work of other contemporary artists, and therefore continues to break down the distinctions often made between self-taught artists and those with an art education background.

Lonnie Holley’s assemblages can be simple or complex in their composition. Along the Rails combines old wire, iron, wood, colored paper, cardboard, plastic and other materials.  Assembled with both delicacy and verve, its title suggests a journey, escape or hardship.  Molting Lonnie is composed of three parts: found concrete with a rebar that serves as the vertical support for a piece of molten iron. The top of the concrete base is splashed with red paint, dripping down the sides.  The materials and their deft organization evoke a raw and formal beauty, while the title of the work suggests impending growth, a recurring theme in Holley’s art.

Featured prominently in Lonnie Holley’s work is a facial profile, found in drawings, wire sculptures and carved sandstone pieces. Small or large, single or in layers, they typically have big eyes, open and expressive. In the drawing I in the Teacher’s Chair, profiles face left and right, while one large eye dominates the center. A kneeling figure cradles a child, watched from above. It is a family or community of sorts, observing and caring for one another.

These faces and figures function as characters in an ongoing story. Indeed, Lonnie Holley’s vivid descriptions of his art stress the interconnectedness of all people and things, both past and present.

Lonnie Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and is the seventh of twenty-seven children. Against significant obstacles he has been a working artist for over thirty years. In Birmingham, he created a unique outdoor installation of his art on the acre of property where he lived, until a forced relocation seventeen years later. Lonnie Holley lives and works in Harpersville, Alabama.

Lonnie Holley’s work is included in numerous public collections: American Folk Art Museum, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among others.

The gallery would like to thank Larry Crenshaw for his assistance with the exhibition.

JEFF BAILEY GALLERY
127 Warren Street, Hudson, NY 12534
www.baileygallery.com