NEW EXHIBITION at Rice Polak Gallery
The Rice Polak Gallery is excited to announce our second feature exhibition of the 2023 season. We will be exhibiting the work of Pamela Murphy, Deb Goldstein & Christie Scheele.
The show previews on Thursday July 20th and runs through Wednesday August 2nd. The Opening Reception is on Friday July 21st beginning at 7pm.
PAMELA MURPHY “SHARED MEMORIES”
“I select figures from my large collection of old photographs to use as subjects for my paintings. I am interested in the fact that, although the people in the photographs may be strangers, they seem almost universally familiar. Living on a ten-acre farm, I am familiar with animals and the rural landscape, from which I also draw inspiration. All of my imagery has a strong sense of memory, history, and nostalgia, which the distressed surfaces of my canvases enhance”.
Pamela Murphy works mostly with a palette knife and rags to wipe glazes on and off her canvases. Through layers of paint, gold leaf and textured canvas applied, reapplied and scraped away she reveals the history of the canvas while enshrining the history of its subject. The quiet power of her work however lies in its dreamlike quality where peaceful muted subjects peer through hazy layers of time, history and collective memory.
DEB GOLDSTEIN “CAN I STEAL THIS”
“Can I steal this” was the first thing Deb Goldstein said to her Cousin Paul Fitzpatrick-Nager when she looked at a stack of monotypes in his studio. “They were beautiful and compelling in texture, line, landscape and composition and I knew I wanted to integrate them into my work.
Paul and I are from the same tribe – physically and aesthetically. Our work blends together through what we see and the history of how we arrived as people and artists. As I started to work them in, more and more it was clear that I wanted to center my next show around this affinity. Each piece tells it’s own separate narrative through this process. This is what collage artists do. We appropriate. We steal. Sometimes with permission and sometimes not. We find, hunt and scavenge and then assemble both consciously and unconsciously to create a different whole from the pieces to tell a story. What I intended and what you see may be different. In collage, that’s perfect.”
CHRISTIE SCHEELE “AIR LIGHT MOTION”
Christie Scheele paints images, in her signature style, of all of the places she has ever been. Among her favorite locales are the beaches and marshes of the Cape Cod & the Northeast, the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and the highways and bridge views of the Hudson Valley and New York City metro area. These meditative pieces cross the boundaries between traditional realism and the contemporary art world, reaching the viewer’s heart without sentimentality or melodrama.
“The single most distinctive aspect to what I do as a landscape painter lies in my ability to reduce a scene to its essentials. This gives the viewer what is important, without the distraction, or visual clutter, of too much detail. With the right atmospherics, anything and everything can reflect a powerful beauty—from smokestacks or headlights on a road to a glorious summer day. Working in a terrain between the descriptive and the abstract, I explore both mood and shape, color, and surface, seeking to create an absorbing experience for the viewer”.
The gallery is now open daily, Thursday, Friday & Saturday evenings, online and of course by appointment. Please visit our website where you now buy artwork directly. And if you are in town this Friday please stop by the gallery and experience this wonderful show in person.
Featured image above: “Gleaming Sand Flats with Tower” by Christie Scheele
