LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
ARTAround |
by Lee Wayne Mills |
Coastal Frameshop and Gallery (4284B Highway One) in Rehoboth is featuring the watercolors of Dorothy Harrison-Braun in their handsome, new space on the service road between Ames and Cingular. If traditional, well-crafted watercolor holds some appeal for you, Harrison-Braun will not disappoint. Her technical skills and fleet brushwork imbue most of her paintings with an authority and immediacy that is very convincing.
Her command of valuesthe light and dark in each paintingallow her colors to soar as they play off each other. If there were a negative side to that action, it would be that Harrison-Braun's palette is a bit predictable and a little too decorative or, that she is often seduced by her colors into producing picture-perfect scenes. But her very best paintings are very good indeed. Zinnias, one of the larger watercolors in the exhibition, explodes from the paper in a masterful display of floral art. It is a lean painting, very little beyond the dazzle of painted petals and the punch of the white paper in support. It is lively the way zinnias are, refreshingly bold in color, glowing and atmospheric. Similarly, Hydrangeas drift in a cloud of blues shadowed by purple with the soft metallic shimmer of a galvanized pail anchoring the composition. Harrison-Braun is skilled in capturing the light at the core of her floral compositions. In Lilac and Dogwood and again in Spring Fancy, an interior light pushes color to an edgy saturation making the works especially vibrant. Elsewhere in the show, Harrison-Braun exhibits classic landscapes, some wildfowl portraits, and some of people as well. The landscapes tend to be more stylized than I like, though the winter scenes carry a good measure of both chill and atmosphere. Louisiana Man and Mardi Gras Woman are charming, colorful, and well paintedcaught somewhere between portrait and caricaturejust the thing for my wet bar, if I had one. At the Edward Carter Gallery in Lewes (122 Market Street), photographers David Halliday and Michael Kahn each display one-man shows. Halliday is exhibiting both still lifes and nudes in toned silver gelatin prints. While seemingly quite different, what Halliday brings to each body of work is a singularly touching and perceptive point of view. Each still life in the series examines its subjectcauliflower, sardines, white currants, a figset within a cookie display tin turned aside, awash in the natural ambient light at hand making each exposure a kind of proscenium or stage setting, at once dramatically silent and stunningly revealing. The hushed and piercing quality of exposure suggests the haunting nature of memento mori, that classic reminder of death and the bittersweet nature of remembrance. Similarly, the nudes are shot with that diffused and gentle light creating impressive compositions of the body. The flesh is full and translucent and the languid rolling or convoluted postures encourage the idea of landscape. And suddenly the hushed beauty of the figure captures the poignant and transitory nature of both loveliness and life itself. Michael Kahn's photographs capture the oceanic intersections, that define worldclass yacht racing. The immediacy and speed and brute force captured in the toned silver gelatin prints is arresting. The massive musculature of the sea in concert with the architecture of the ships creates photographic compositions of enormous power and scope. Then the images transform into revealing self-examinations. The volume and density of an ocean swell or the translucent skin of a sail become arenas of nuance and detail and luminous presence. It is all joyously intoxicating and larger than life. Then, perhaps just for the fun of it, Kahn zooms in on the abstract geometries of the close-up of a ship's hullwhere pitted and chipped paint meet corroded and rusty cleat. Between the high-key color and the wealth of incidental texture and form, he fashions something like a very fine non-objective paintingand I like that in a photograph. It reminds me to keep on painting. Lee Mills, a Rehoboth artist who has exhibited in both local and regional galleries, is currently Gallery Associate at the Rehoboth Art League. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 12, August 23, 2002. |