Outside the Open Window: 8/22 - 2/18/22

Outside the Open Window — January 8 - February 18

 

Andra Norris Gallery is delighted to present Outside the Open Window, an exhibition that features new work from April Dawn Parker, Susan Manchester, and Ryan Reynolds, three established California artists who consider our transforming natural world through a scientific and historical lens.

 

April Dawn Parker’s series of triptych oil paintings depict magical landscapes and biomes inspired by our evolving earthly environment. The vibrant surreal worlds in these paintings are fashioned in the spirit of sacred religious iconography but contemplate the innate divinity of nature rather than religious myths. Rich with symbolism and glorious color, the oil on linen paintings enlighten and direct viewers to consider Earths’ splendor as well as her pain.

 

Susan Manchester’s Floating World series of drawings of feathers and flora are meditations on the ephemeral nature of life, and they reflect the artist’s fascination with beauty in all its strangeness. Manchester has dedicated herself to the close observation of natural phenomenon, and her works on paper help to direct our attention to a contemplative place while living in our high-speed world. Manchester’s strong affinity with Renaissance drawing and her love of printmaking borne from classical Italian art studies, combined with the drawing skills that she has refined over decades, are in full display in these meticulously detailed graphite, silverpoint, and Conté crayon works that suggest the felicitous integration of power, delicacy and the fugitive nature of reality.

 

Ryan Reynolds’ Continuum series conveys concepts of time and space within a single landscape painting. Reynolds takes his inspiration from Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series that captured shifts in light due to time, weather, and physical changes to the environment, but Reynolds captures these shifts within a single picture plane. Areas within the scene are partitioned with red lines to separate the results from one painting session to the next, creating a single landscape that features atmospheric differences based on alternating periods when the work was created, mostly on location and outdoors. 

 

Reynolds’ Ebb and Flow landscapes — featuring the Napa Valley and Santa Cruz regions and originally created for the Napa Valley Museum in 2017 — consider weathering, erosion, and other changes that have shifted the terrain. Pictorials of historical figures from the museum’s archive are also embedded into the works’ underpainting to honor those people who shaped the region culturally. 

 

For more information, please contact Andra Norris at Andra Norris Gallery.

 

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