Landscapes and Bodyscapes
Jane Bloodgood-Abrams, Bruce Sargeant & Dan Rupe
Opening Reception: Saturday, Nov. 8th 6-8pm
November 6, 2014 through December 14, 2014
The soft folds of the Catskill Mountains, the pinkish rays that pour from a rising summer sun, the shadows cast across the train tracks are scenes all too familiar for those living in the Hudson Valley region. The natural landscape is one of life's few accepted obsessions; like voyeurs, we rush to ogle Mother Nature’s lush curves and fiery autumn foliage, endlessly chasing after the changing seasons. In much the same way, we idolize beauty of the human body. Efforts to preserve the softness of youth, the chiseled features of taught skin and muscles- this aesthetic has become as much a part of our natural landscape as the rivers and mountains. Carrie Haddad Gallery is pleased to present new works in an exhibit opening Nov. 5th by three artists whose studies of landscapes and bodyscapes have catapulted them to national and international recognition.
Painter Jane Bloodgood-Abrams has become one of the area’s most celebrated artists, gracing viewers with her compositions of sky, river, and earth. Being less concerned with documenting specific scenes, Bloodgood-Abrams is focused on capturing nature’s essence, “the deeply profound moments, where there is a connection to a vital energy.” Her process begins with being in nature, where she allows the emotional energy of the landscape to filter through her psyche. The memory is then translated onto canvas after being worked over a period of time with layers of paint that is applied, wiped away, and reworked. The result is a radiantly dramatic remembrance of Bloodgood-Abram’s encounter with “something beyond everyday life”. The artist’s final hope is for these images to evoke remembrances within the viewer's own personal relationship with nature.
Bloodgood-Abrams’s continued demonstration of technical skill driven by unwavering attention recalls the pioneering of the Hudson River School, Luminists and Tonalist painters. Bloodgood-Abrams makes a critical and contemporary contribution to her genre; the creation of images that are as much self-referential objects as representations of the objective world. She received her Master of Fine Arts at SUNY New Paltz and paints primarily in the Hudson River Valley and the Berkshires. Her work is exhibited internationally and regionally, and Carrie Haddad Gallery has proudly represented Jane Bloodgood-Abrams since 1995.
Hudson resident Dan Rupe is an artist as energetic and joyous as his images. Much of his recent work features familiar local scenes such as the Catskill Mountains or the Hudson waterfront, but each piece is personal to Rupe in that it provides an opportunity for the artist to express himself through color. His paintings are all about the active process in which they were produced; as his mantra states: “Art is not a noun. Art is a verb, you must take action.” His canvases become less about the finished piece and more about observation. Compositions become altered by life experiences rather than the desire for a more aesthetic canvas, and color transforms with inevitable shifts in lights or a change of emotional status. Rupe finds truth in his colors, deciding at the start of his painting career never to use black or muddy tones. Instead, he demonstrates how darkness can be achieved using the deepest shade of the most brilliant color. The energy of everyday being excites Rupe. Always painting from life, he is captivated by the theatrics of the world around him, talking to people, or chasing the passing sun with the stroke of his brush.
Dan Rupe knew he wanted to become an artist at age 16. He painted all over the world from Nepal to Chicago before settling between Hudson, NY and Provincetown, MA. Rupe studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. He has also taught workshops at the Hudson Opera House. Carrie Haddad Gallery has been showing Rupe’s work since 2002.
Bruce Sargeant, the most prolific of Mark Beard’s various invented personas, will be exhibiting his unforgettable masculine figure paintings. Sargeant presents the viewer with examples of the ideal male form through his statuesque models that flaunt chiseled muscle and impeccable bone structure. His corporal obsessions are apparent through blatant repetition of athletes in the state of physical activities including skiing, wrestling, diving, hunting, and bodybuilding. What these trophy figures lack in vitality, they make up for with perfect contours and sinewy cores and limbs that impart the sense of strength and permanence customarily achieved in sculpture. Bodies are grouped together in fencing matches and hunting parties; their human form dominating any presence of nature's landscape.
Mark Beard has exhibited with Carrie Haddad Gallery for almost twenty years. Beard is the creator of six artistic personalities, including Bruce Sargeant, whom he based painting styles off of John Singer Sargent and George Bellows. Beard’s work is featured in many significant collections both nationally and abroad, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Several of Beard’s murals as Bruce Sargeant have been installed in Abercrombie & Fitch stores worldwide.
