Press

"Drawing is essential to the training of an artist. It is the most direct medium between the artist and his observations, thoughts, feelings and experiences—serving both as a record and as a revealer of truth. Drawing is both a cognitive and manual process that provides the foundation for painting, sculpture and architecture. Fairfield artist Rick Shaefer’s monumental, breath-taking drawings offer viewers an adventure in looking with his technically precise and visually poetic drawings of animals and nature."

"For her big strokes, O’Neill uses nothing more than herself to push oils across canvas. It’s a uniquely physical process, one sized to the canvas and her own frame, and results in something I now see, in part, as a set of movements captured in one long exposure. This is not at all to suggest her work is merely the result of some actionist happening. Her paintings are nothing like Yves Klein’s raunchy “human paintbrush” performances, which would today certainly land him in the court of microaggressions.

"Rick Shaefer: Drawing the Line" at the Hausatonic Museum of Art, a solo exhibition through March 27th, featured in the New York Times on Saturday, February 28, 2015.

“Plans,” an exhibition of recent ink-on-silk works by Eugene Brodsky, an artist with studios in East Hampton and New York City, is on view at Sears-Peyton Gallery in Chelsea through Dec. 20.

The works reflect Mr. Brodsky’s fascination with the blueprints and sketches of significant 20th-century architecture, especially “the worked-on, tattered, erased, and notated records of how something came to be.” Each piece fuses his vision with that of an architect or planner, resulting in images that suggest, but do not replicate, their origins.

Mr. Brodsky has described these pieces as “essentially creating a jigsaw puzzle of silk,” a complicated process that includes drawing, collage, vector conversion, laser-cutting, inking, silk-stretching, pinning, and assembly, processes that, in the artist’s words, “remain mostly invisible to the viewer, who rightly just sees what’s there.”

Jane Rosen interviewed by Richard Whittaker

"Luxe L.A. bag and accessories brand Parabellum has opened its first permanent brick-and-mortar space — a flagship store on Melrose Avenue just west of Paul Smith’s pink pied-a-terre.

"The shop, which officially opened Aug. 23, has a western interior wall dominated by a 12-foot-by-9-foot three-panel charcoal drawing of an American bison created by artist Rick Shaefer opposite a custom-made, 8-foot-long, black bison leather Chesterfield sofa with claw feet. Other wall art includes mirror and metal pieces by L.A. brand Blackman Cruz."

"“I spend a lot of time in libraries looking at old art books,” admits the artist. “Right now I’m looking at painters from the late 1600s, who are documenting life around them.” Reed takes inspiration from that time period by appropriating images from those paintings and recombining them in an effort to connect to a contemporary audience the way that artists like De Hondecoeter and Snyders spoke to theirs."

"The most enchanting pieces were the night scenes. They capture the intrigue of the seemingly expansive harbor. The large work Tug in Night, for instance, features a lone boat navigating dark waters in the dead of night. Shining lights from distant ships provide faint visibility, but nearby forms are indiscernible. Lynch’s thick application of paint on paper caused the work to buckle and form wavelike ripples. The glossy finish is reminiscent of the surface of the reflective waters. Though Lynch’s techniques are highly simplified, her visual effects are captivating."

"Celia Gerard is an artist for whom two sticks of charcoal, a bit of white paint, and a strong sheet of paper is plenty of material. "Line Quality" could be her mantra, and looking at her works one can see why. Gerard's abstract compositions are built on geometric foundations of linear marks that may be subtle or bold but are always decisive. While her solo exhibition, "Lost at Sea," was being hung, ArtSlant editor Charlie Schultz paid Gerard a visit to discuss her newest body of work."

"Celia Gerard's mixed-media works hang in a balance of solidity and transparency, sculpture and drawing, as she finds a way to dig deeper into space.

"The eight compositions on display at the Sears-Peyton Gallery are a continuation of a body of work. “The work started when I was studying at the [New York] Studio School,” Gerard told The Daily Beast Thursday night at the opening of her new show, Lost at Sea. “I was working in low relief… and I realized that I wasn’t able to go as deep [into the space] as I wanted to,” she said, mentioning her formal training as a sculptor. “So I moved to drawing out of necessity.”"