Harry Orlyk, Craig Johns & Tona Wilson

Reception: Saturday December 16 from 6 to 8pm

December 14, 2006 through January 21, 2007

Carrie Haddad Gallery is pleased to announce their winter exhibit, LANDSCAPES, with new work by Harry Orlyk and Craig Johns and works on paper by Tona Wilson. A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, December 16 from 6 to 8pm.

Harry Orlyk works out of the front seat of his truck, recording the landscape around his home in Salem, New York, and in so doing offers a journey into the serenity of the American countryside. Orlyk uses a free-spirited margin-right: -0.5in;">This exhibit, coinciding with Orlyk’s sixtieth birthday, will feature over twenty new works showcasing his journey as an artist. Orlyk states, “Often the relationship between works is cinema graphic, instantly telling a story of landscape painting progressing through endless variation.”

Craig Johns wasborn in Philadelphia into a family of outstanding artists including his uncle Arthur B. Carles, the renowned early 20th century American abstractionist. In the summer of 1947 studied painting at the HansHofmannSchool in Provincetown, MA. After earning a BA degree from ColumbiaUniversity, he spent a year at the Royal Academy de Beaux Arts in Brussels. Upon his return from Europe, he became an art director at Time Inc. where he worked until 1987. During that time he participated in group shows of abstract painters at the Signa Gallery in East Hampton, New York.

After taking early retirement from Time Inc. in order devote full time to his life-long desire to paint, he had a one-man show in 1998 at the Garuda Gallery in Sharon CT. The paintings, consisting of landscapes and still life’s, showed a direction away from the abstract toward almost total naturalism. A number of observers however noted that the artist's early concern for abstract pictorial demands were still an integral part of his current work.

Tona Wilson’s new work began with some drawings she did after listening to a song by Berthold Brecht (music by Hans Eisner) called “Whitewash,” The song talks about hiding and covering up truths in a political sense. “I had been concerned with how we human beings as individuals avoid seeing frightening and uncomfortable truths, in particular the denial of our own mortality. As I worked on the sketches, I found that the two were not really separate.”

Carrie Haddad Gallery is located at 622 Warren Street in Hudson, New York. Gallery hours are from 11 to 5pm daily, closed on Wednesdays. For more information contact the gallery at 518-828-1915 or visit us online at www.carriehaddadgallery.com

Craig Johns

Harry Orlyk