Summer Snapshots

With different backgrounds and styles, James Wolanin, Audra Weaser, Eric Zener, America Martin, and Danny Galieote all gravitate towards and explore the nuances surrounding the imagery and colors of the summer season. In composition and approach, the work could not be any more different, yet, each contains a particular distilment of the look and feel of the summer, a subject to which each artist feels drawn to and explores in depth via their own artistic process.

James Wolanin’s Time For A Swim personifies classic Americana and the hazy days of summer. Depicting the subtle beauty of a simple curve (a tilted chin, the waves of the pool’s water) in a minimalist palette, Wolanin explores representations of women in the latter half of the 20th century. Paying particular attention to cast shadows and dramatic light sources, his stylized compositions create large, flat, color fields often emphasized by pattern and repetition.

Audra Weaser’s process-based paintings are excavations of her memories and perspectives of nature. Intuitively placing large swathes of color while working the entirety of the surface, Weaser applies color before the quick-drying paint becomes permanently fixed on the panels. Using a sander, she selectively removes areas of color, cutting through to the bottom of the composition in organic movements that echo the direction of her brushstrokes, revealing the final composition laden with fantasy.

Eric Zener captures breathtaking scenes of submersion with compositions centered on the brief, but wondrous, state of change, as the body enters the vast, blue space of water. Often framed by an explosive cloud of air bubbles such as in Surfacing, Zener focuses on the articulation of the body in space, its weight and presence. In utilizing mixed media, Zener is able to focus on other properties within the scenes, such as the effect of water on light, by incorporating light reflective elements such as silver leaf.

Offering thoughtful, meditative reflections in her work that meld dreams with narrative, America Martin’s work often centers around overarching themes of human nature and our relationship with the environment. Presenting these ideas in symbolic narrative, Women By the Sea Look Out At The Sun blends the fluid outlines of the female forms with the colors of the seascape background as body and landscape become one.