ELLEN PHELAN – LANDSCAPES AND STILL LIFES
2011-03-07Ellen Phelan’s recent landscapes and still-life paintings completed between 1997 and 2010 flicker in and out of focus between realism’s sharp relief and abstraction’s gestural mark, between observations made from life and references to the photographic image.
In Woods (Westport), the earliest of the paintings on display, the suggestion of an entire forest is expressed through minimal brushwork, revealing her lineage in abstraction. As Phelan moves between mediums, she explores the formal and psychological implications attainable with each. The watercolor, gouache and pastel on paper Peonies and Quail on Mantel obscures the subject then pulls it back into clarity. For the oil on linen version, she allows the forms to be fully realized as representations of a domestic still life.
Opposite – Balsam, 2006
Exhibition runs through to March 19th, 2011
Gasser Grunert
524 West 19th Street
New York
NY
10011
