“Paintings and Collages” on Display in Romano Gallery
 
From March 30-April 25, “Paintings and Collages” by Elizabeth O’Reilly is on display in the Romano Gallery of Armstrong-Hipkins Center for Arts, Blair Academy. An artist’s reception took place on April 2. O’Reilly exhibits her loosely-brushed oil paintings of Ireland, Long Island’s North Fork and the environs of Blairstown, where she has been painting for the past 15 years. Also included in the show are collages of Brooklyn’s Gowanus canal on watercolor-tinted paper, described by Maureen Mullarkey of The New York Sun as lending, “a distinctive modernity and sophisticated whimsy to her motifs.” 

The paintings play on abstract and representational levels, relying on lively brushwork to capture the immediacy of plein air painting. Undaunted by the weather, O’Reilly paints the snow by the Delaware Water Gap, ice on Blair pond and waterfalls along the Paulinskill. She notes, “The historic Ring Forts in rural Ireland, hilltops circled with hawthorn trees, and hillsides carved with potato drills provide a different landscape, carved and shaped by man and creating intriguing patterns of color on the fields. And the gas stations and sheds of Long Island in spring and fall offer up other seasons, with the surprising color of man-made objects. Whether it be Blairstown, Ireland or the North Fork, all paintings demonstrate my interest in color and form.”

She adds, “I’m not afraid to experiment; taking my interest in color and form to a new medium, I make print-outs of my paintings of the Gowanus section of Brooklyn to create collages.  By hand-tinting the paper, I lose the bravura brush-work of the oils but gain the painterly gradations of watercolor, and by cutting into the paper with an X-acto knife, the soft edges we come to expect from that medium are replaced by crisp and concise shapes. Clouds and water, which we think of as fluid and soft, become irrevocable shapes, and complex architectural structures are reduced to colors and shapes, by the simplest of means.”

Click on images to view larger.

Gallery hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.; for information, call (908) 362-6121, ext. 5692.

Updated 4/5/09

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