During May and June, the George Adams Gallery will exhibit a new series of imaginary landscape paintings by SANDY WINTERS. The exhibition will feature a series of eight new oil on panel paintings of imaginary landscapes, a new subject for Winters, all 4 x 4 feet or larger.
Titled "In My Backyard," the series consists of landscapes populated by a wide variety of mutant creatures, some animal, some quasi-mechanical. These characters co-exist for the most part peaceably, but there is always a hint of a world teetering on the brink. In each of the paintings Winters also takes advantage of the panel's wood grain surface by allowing the painted lines to echo the rhythm of the grain or to incorporate the grain in the imagery of the landscape.
A repeated motif in each work is an environment within an environment in the form of a sealed glass bowl; part of the landscape yet clearly not natural, it is an equivalent yet artificial world. In "Devil's Haircut," 2006, for example, an idyllic view of a lake and rolling hills has, in the immediate foreground, an oversize glass globe inside of which is a cast of strange, animated forms. "Don't Pop My Bubble," 2006, depicts in close-up a view of tree trunks from which extend strange mushroom-like growths and another globe teaming with odd life forms. The image of flowing water in "Melt-Down," 2006, suggests the onset of a spring thaw and the reawakening of nature is partly viewed through another glass globe.
Winters, who lives and works in New York City, has been exhibiting with the gallery regularly since 1990. "Pretexts and Subtexts," a survey of her recent work organized by the MIA Art Center, Miami, traveled to the Ringling Museum, in Sarasota and the Von Liebig in Naples in 2005 and 2006.
Sandy Winters: In My Backyard and Kako Ueda: Recent Paper Cut-Outs will be on view through June 23, 2007.
Checklist
1. Devil's Hair Cut, 2006
Graphite, oil, block print, collage on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 60
2. Don't Pop My Bubble, 2006
Oil, block print, collage, aluminum on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 52
3. Bring 'em On, 2007
Oil, collage, graphite, block print, newsprint on wood (4 panels)
72 x 72 x 2 inches
SWp 61
4. Living in a Fishbowl, 2007
Oil, paper collage, block print on aluminum on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 59
5. Goodyear, Bad Times, 2007
Oil, collage, graphite, block print, newsprint on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 62
6. Against the Tide, 2007
Graphite, oil, block print, collage on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 60
7. (from left to right) :
Said it Wrong, 2006
Graphite, ink, pastel, block print on paper
4 x 4 inches
SWd 65
Turtles Too, 2006
Graphite, ink, pastel, block print on paper
4 x 4 inches
SWd 64
Blow your Horn, 2006
Graphite, ink, pastel, block print on paper
4 x 4 inches
SWd 66
Brass Ring, 2006
Graphite, ink, pastel, block print on paper
4 x 4 inches
SWd 67
8. Where the Light's too Strong, 2007
Pastel and conte, graphite, block print, collage on paper
48 x 48 inches
SWd 63
Front Window:
Melt-Down, 2006
Oil and collage on wood
48 x 48 x 2 inches
SWp 54
