Plain Air

PLAIN AIR_

PLAIN AIR_

Leslie Baum Tanya Brodsky Deborah Brown Spencer Carmona Andrew Holmquist Mike Howat Olivia Schreiner Sophie Treppendahl Emma White

May 29 - July 17, 2021

CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY

CHICAGO IL

All images courtesy the artists and Carrie Secrist Gallery.

Installation images courtesy Nathan Keay.

© 2021, Carrie Secrist Gallery

Cover image: Andrew Holmquist, Russian Gulch 1, 2020, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Whether painting en plein air, or from the con nes of a studio, the landscape is the original natural point of inspiration and awe. The existence of such is permanent, yet always changing, both from a literal point of view and from a sensorial one – that arises from the viewer. The interpretation of the landscape at the hands of artists meets the natural world in a re ection. This mirror can offer a wide variety of sensations that inhibit, displace, or exasperate but as a genre – or original art historical trope – the landscape is an ideal muse The artwork on view in PLAIN AIR has primarily been made within the last year and a half. This timestamp corresponds with the majority of our population existing in a physically con ned state that borders on a mentally restrained state of mind. The landscapes on view highlight an oppositional tension between the real and the rendered, the idyllic and non-idyllic, the rational and emotional, all of which are intensi ed by our proximity to the outdoors. This heightened sense of spatial awareness – staring out our windows, taking our pets for short walks, sitting on our back stoops – is an intensi ed collective subconscious desire to be immersed in the natural landscape. As we are nally returning to a time when the atmosphere around us was composed of plain air pre-pandemic, we communally can breathe in and let out a huge sigh of relief With over forty artworks by nine artists on view in our multi-room 10th story penthouse-turned-exhibition space, PLAIN AIR offers a setting with multiple views of Chicago’s urban landscape. This built environment is representative of the different types of landscapes on view. From pastoral to metropolitan, bucolic to angst- lled, psychedelic to representational, the range of aesthetic values of the landscapes mirror a collective experience Leslie Baum’s (Chicago) long-running practice of plein air painting in and around Chicago is on view with four subtly abstract paintings of eerily familiar environments. Tanya Brodsky’s (Los Angeles) hanging two-way vertical blinds subverts and exploits our relationship to nature. Deborah Brown’s (New York) “Shadow Paintings” shifts a mundane personal task – walking her dog Trout – into an immersive and existential experience. Spencer Carmona’s (Los Angeles) moonscapes tackle color theory as a repetitive task attempting to capture the ethereal. Andrew Holmquist’s (Los Angeles) plein air paintings simultaneously capture the light, mood, and potential of California’s originality. Mike Howat’s (New Hampshire) paintings of still-lives of the sills of windows create framed portraits of landscapes. Olivia Schreiner’s (Chicago) atmospheric paintings pit exteriors against interiors with a wound up tension using light as an interloper. Sophie Treppendahl’s (New Orleans) paintings frame a captured landscape in windows with a palpable strain made all the more intense through her brush stroke and use of perspective. Emma White’s (Toronto) paintings on paper focus on the outdoor world around her albeit with a very subtle human signature

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PLAIN AIR was organized with assistance from gallery artist Andrew Holmquist.

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Andrew Holmquist (left) and Deborah Brown (right)

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Tanya Brodsky

Leslie Bau At the heart of my ongoing plein air painting project is an invitation. “Come paint with me,” I ask friends, colleagues, peers, and even a few near-strangers. Usually, they say yes, if with some hesitancy or trepidation. For our date, I am the hostess. I bring what we need: the paint, the paper, the table where we sit, often a snack. My guest’s only responsibility is to show up. We’ll usually settle together on a location—a park or other natural spot in the Chicago area—but when we meet, I like for my painting companion to choose our view, to help shape our experience. Once settled, I set up my folding table and we sit side by side on little folding chairs. I unpack the watercolors, the small blocks of paper, the brushes. I have hosted more than a hundred such painting dates, and at the start, it's always awkward. Most people don't make art in front of someone else. Most people—even other painters—don't paint in watercolor and don't work plein air. They don't work so small, and they don't paint and talk at the same time. All of these conditions, which de ne the painting date, nurture a vulnerability, a presentness, an intimacy that feels meaningful and new When I started this project, I had no idea how important these shared painting dates would become to me; that they would become as much the artwork as the nal paintings they inspire in my studio. When the pandemic hit, I grieved for all the expected reasons, but also for the anticipated loss of this project, as COVID destroyed the physical experience of painting outdoors with another person. I found a pivot, though, and began to host dates online, mediated by Zoom and FaceTime. We no longer sat with arms touching, but the vulnerability and communion of conversing and painting together persisted, continuing to provide connection and to weave together myself and those with whom I paint. This project will enter a new phase as our world transitions into what comes next. I expect it to follow me for my whole painting life, and it will continue to evolve, as life itself does. I'm curious to see what happens next.

Though the project persisted through this COVID year, the four paintings included in this exhibition are from the before times. I'd like to walk you through one, to reveal the experiences, visual inputs, and relationships that inform it. This painting, Shaping the Day: rs, ph dmc, is the result of three painting dates that reverberate with meaning and memory. The background, this psychedelic landscape, is my interpretation of a watercolor painted by my Aunt Rachie. She was a lifelong hobby painter, and when I visited her in the fall of 2018, she was dying. I was determined that we would paint together on this occasion, as unlikely as it seemed. I set up a folding table in her living room and opened the blinds on the oor to ceiling French doors, revealing the view of her generously wooded yard. Out came the paints and the paper. I got to work, and after a short while she joined me, concentrating herself fully on making art. It was the last painting she made. The second element, the funny shape centered in the work, comes from a Portia Hein watercolor painted on a plein air date at Sea Ranch in Northern California. I tacked this extra-scenic painting date onto a getaway with three of my closest friends, insisting that we all paint together overlooking the Paci c Ocean. The shape is a central gesture in one of Portia’s elegant watercolors, painted in a luminous blue. I cut out the shape seen here from a printout of the original and used it to frame a section of one of my friend Dana Carter’s watercolors. Dana and I painted together four times, including once in her home a few months before her passing in 2019. We painted together for the rst time in Chicago’s Humboldt Park. We sat on a rocky path that crosses the lagoon on the west side of the park, balancing our table precariously between two uneven stone steps. She brought honey cake and tea, and we painted together in the late afternoon autumn light, snacking, sipping and talking about all the things. Ever the innovator, Dana submerged her watercolor in the lagoon, letting the silt pile up on the surface and the water shift the colors.

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~Leslie Baum

Shaping the Day: rs, ph, dmc is my response to these three dates and my interpretation of the three watercolors produced by these beloved painting companions. Like this painting, all the works that I produce from this social practice emerge from and are indebted to the landscape. The physical world that my painting companion and I experience —the trees, plants, rocks, bodies of water, sky overhead— and the shared act of looking, making, and revealing create the emotional landscape of the painting. These four paintings are the expression of multiple intertwined landscapes. Their formal qualities arise from my adoption of my painting dates’ unique visual languages and out of my own aesthetic sensibilities, which are informed by the many other painters and artists to whom I have long looked for guidance. ~Leslie Baum

Plein air painting project: Image courtesy of the artist

Leslie Baum

Shaping the day: rs, ph, dmc, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

36 x 24.5 inches

Leslie Baum

Shaping the day: ph, mg, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

35 x 25 inches

Leslie Baum

Shaping the day: ct, hs, kl, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

35 x 29 inches

Leslie Baum

Shaping the day: em & lb, 2019

Acrylic on canvas

34 x 26 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors, 2018- 2020

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 4, 5, 6, 14, 15, 16), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 6, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 8, 9, 10, 18, 19, 20), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 21, 22, 23, 31, 32, 33), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 22, 23, 24, 32, 33, 34), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 25, 26, 27, 35, 36, 37), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 28, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 31, 32, 33, 41, 42, 43), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 34, 35, 36, 44, 45, 46), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 37, 38, 39, 47, 48, 49), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

DETAIL, Leslie Baum, Untitled plein air watercolors (from upper left corner: 38, 39, 40, 48, 49, 50), 2018- 2021,

watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper, 7 x 10 inches each

INSTALLATION VIEW, Leslie Baum and Tanya Brodsky

Instagram ads cheekily offer me houseplants as “the new love of your life.” “No light? No soil? No problem!” I am told of a smart gadget that purports to bring that back-to-the-earth feeling right into your home. “Stuck at home? Bring nature inside!” Walking daily laps around my neighborhood in the early months of the pandemic, I came to feel that I was expanding the perimeter of my living space rather than getting away to a real “outside,” not the desired effect. My laptop boots up to a new stock photo of a forest, with pop-ups to click for discount vacation packages. The pictorial landscape is as much about envisioning yourself within the scene, as it is about looking at the image presented: a looking out to look in. In the Soviet interiors of my childhood, the photo mural wallpaper served as an unselfconsciously kitsch portal between its inviting forest scenery and the bland standardization of the typical apartment.

When we moved to the US, the photo mural appeared most often next to a blinds-covered window that looks out onto a parking lot, in the reception areas of professionals likely to deliver upsetting news. “How to increase the motivation of your employees with of ce murals” suggests one article. In the past year, the half-heartedly soothing ambiance offered by the photo-mural has been replaced by the nature Zoom background. What’s on offer in both cases is a veneer of nature, a attening of a temporal multi sensory experience into a single visual plane. This line between stock image and reality has become further muddled in the careful curation of background plants and book titles, procured and arranged in a process more akin to Photoshop than home decoration. I’m starting to get targeted ads for hyper-realistic 3D rendered plants in my feed

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~Tanya Brodsky

Tanya Brodsk

Image courtesy of the artist

Tanya Brodsky, A wide view of a dense forest in British Columbia/ Carne mista assortita (side a), 2016, salvaged vertical blinds, vinyl, stock photographs, 101 x 42x 3.5 inches

Tanya Brodsky, A wide view of a dense forest in British Columbia/ Carne mista assortita (side a), 2016, salvaged vertical blinds, vinyl, stock photographs, 101 x 42x 3.5 inches

Tanya Brodsky

A wide view of a dense forest in British Columbia/ Fresh Raw Meat 1 (side a), 2019

salvaged vertical blinds, vinyl, stock photographs,

27 x 45 x 3.5 inches

Tanya Brodsky

A wide view of a dense forest in British Columbia/ Fresh Raw Meat 1 (side a), 2019

salvaged vertical blinds, vinyl, stock photographs,

27 x 45 x 3.5 inches

Deborah Brown’s “Shadow Paintings” derive from daily walks with her dog Trout during the year of the pandemic. The subject matter is drawn from the East Williamsburg Industrial Zone in Brooklyn where the artist’s studio is located. The area is dominated by onestory warehouses covered with colorful street art, murals and graf ti. Although the neighborhood is only a few miles from Manhattan, the absence of tall structures allows for uninterrupted vistas down multiple blocks, often in several directions at once. These are some of the elements that attracted the artist to paint these images The Shadow Paintings are structured around absence. The human protagonist is represented by her shadow. A leash connects her to her canine companion who is often the only animate creature in the painting. Winter light and the low angle of the sun extend the shadows far into the distance, creating odd distortions and evocative patterns. In the course of constructing the images, Brown catalogues the multifaceted structures that occur in an urban space—stop signs, telephone poles, light stanchions, fences, grates, sidewalk paving and spray-painted symbols. Commonplace artifacts that we take for granted in a human-in ected environment are paired with the Dionysian graf ti that covers the low-rise structures. The result is a play of painted signs and symbols that move our eye around the space of the painting, creating new relationships between the elements and forcing the viewer to decode and reinterpret familiar markers

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The artist places the viewer in the role of a protagonist navigating a landscape mostly devoid of human inhabitants. The absence of cars and people gives the work an existential cast as if the protagonist might be a survivor among the last inhabitants of a strange landscape. This theme takes on added meaning after a year of quarantine and isolation created by the global pandemic. We are all gures who emerge tentatively from shelter, happy to nd the world intact, but wary of what awaits us.

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Deborah Brow

View of Deborah Brown’s studio courtesy of the artist

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Andrew Holmquist, Henry Cowell, 2021, Oil on canvas, 12.5 x 15 inches and Deborah Brown, Pink Trees, 2021, oil on canvas 48 x 48 inches

Deborah Brown

Pink Trees, 2021

Oil on canvas

48 x 48 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring Andrew Holmquist, Point Cabrillo 1, Russian Gulch 3, 2021, Oil on canvas, both 10 x 8 inches and Deborah Brown, Signs of Spring, 2021, Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches, 48 x 60 inches

Deborah Brown, Signs of Spring, 2021, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Deborah Brown

Windy Day, 2021

Oil on masonite

24 x 18 inches

Deborah Brown

Tree Trunk, 2021

Oil on masonite

20 x 16 inches

Deborah Brown

Tunnel, 2021

Oil on masonite

20 x 16 inches

Deborah Brown, Tunnel (detail), 2021, oil on masonite, 20 x 16 inches

Spencer Carmon Last year I created a body of work titled "2Q20." The title is in reference to Haruki Murakami's dystopian novel "1Q84" where characters are confronted, unbeknownst to them, with a parallel reality of the year 1984. In this new reality things are just subtly off and almost indistinguishable from the world of which they know. In many ways the year 2020 and all its dif culties and strangeness became the parallel version of reality. All "2Q20" paintings were made during the pandemic The landscape was the perfect place for me to enter this alternate reality because it was something I was so familiar with, having worked within this subject matter for many years. The landscape has always been a place of personal expression for me, but it seemed to be even more a place for working through feelings during the height of the pandemic. In a way, they meant more for me during this time.

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~Spencer Carmona

“… an image I have kept on the wall for a number of years now of a Casper David Friedrich painting that I have kept inspiration from.” Image courtesy of the artist.

INSTALLATION VIEW: Spencer Carmona

Spencer Carmona, Nocturne, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 50 inches

Spencer Carmona, Violet Moons, 2018, oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches

Spencer Carmona, Untitled (Blue Sky), 2019, oil on linen, 26 x 23 inches

Spencer Carmona, Crescent Moon with Venus, 2021, oil on canvas, 40 x 36 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Spencer Carmona

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Spencer Carmona

Spencer Carmona, Night Painting, 2019, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, Untitled (blue sky), 2020, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, Psalm, 2019, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, Crescent Moon with Venus, 2021, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, 2Q20, 2020, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, Green Gold Sun, 2019, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, White Moon, 2020, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Spencer Carmona, 2Q20, 2020, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

I wonder if I would have ever returned to painting en plein air if it weren’t for the pandemic. I had been thinking about painting outdoors for a while, but it was the kind of thought that got set aside when more important things demanded my attention. The pandemic, however, obliterated important things—lives, jobs, imaginable futures—but gave space and time for so many back burner ambitions (like so many of us, I’m now an accomplished baker, gardener, and handyman) The rst plein air paintings of the pandemic were small, small enough to easily hide, and they were a kind of postcard from my rst major trip leaving the house after months of deep hibernation. A Christmas/New Years gift that I gave to myself was permission to paint again in open air, but this time on a larger scale and returning to the same spot (Los Angeles’s Elysian Park) for several days, thereby allowing me to complete the painting at whatever pace it required. It wasn’t until the canvas blew over and into the dirt on day four that I gave myself permission to also fully let go and have fun. What popped out of that uncorked bottle was all of the painterly, ribbony, wormy brushwork. With a restricted gradient of colors and twist of the wrist, I was able to succinctly articulate—in broad brushstrokes—the form, light, and space of this complicated nature reserve Now, several months and several paintings later, I’ve found that when I choose to paint a landscape, I engage with its vistas differently. I explore, stop, and stare in ways I wouldn’t otherwise. I collect prized views and spend hours contemplating them. The pandemic required projects that I could lose myself in, that were direct, and above all, a testament that pleasure existed. I don’t see why that should stop

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~Andrew Holmquis

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Andrew Holmquis

Image courtesy of the artist

Andrew Holmquist

Alba Road 1, 2021

Oil on canvas

Diptych, 18 x 42 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Henry Cowell 1, 2021, oil on canvas, 12.5 x 15 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW, Andrew Holmquist, Elysian Park, 2020, Point Cabrillo 1, 2021 and Russian Gulch 3, 2021

Andrew Holmquist, Elysian Park 1, 2020, Oil on canvas, 31.5 x 39.5 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Point Cabrillo 1, 2021, Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Russian Gulch 3, 2021, Oil on canvas, 10 x 8 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW: Andrew Holmquist, Elysian Park, 2020, Russian Gulch 3, 2021 and Russian Gulch 2, 2021 and Wharf Rock 1, 2021

Andrew Holmquist

Russian Gulch 3, 2021

Oil on canvas

10 x 8 inches

Andrew Holmquist

Russian Gulch 2, 2021

Oil on canvas

10 x 8 inches

Andrew Holmquist

Wharf Rock 1, 2021

Oil on canvas

10 x 8 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Backyard Hammock, 2021, Oil on four canvases, 18 x 60 inches (18 x 15 inches each)

DETAIL, Andrew Holmquist, Backyard Hammock, 2021

INSTALLATION VIEW: Andrew Holmquist, Alba Road 1, 2020, Point Lobos, 2021 and Cabrillo Highway 2, 2021 and Wharf Rock 1, 2021

Andrew Holmquist

Cabrillo Highway 1, 2021

Oil on canvas

21 x 18 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Point Lobos, 2021, Oil on canvas, 12.5 x 15 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Cabrillo Highway 2, 2021, Oil on canvas, 15 x 18 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW , Andrew Holmquist, Tree 2, Tree 3 and Tree 4, 2019.

Andrew Holmquist

Tree 2, 2019

Colored pencil, wax pastel

and oil on paper

44 x 30.5 inches

Andrew Holmquist

Tree 3, 2019

Trace monotype, Colored pencil, wax pastel, spray pain and oil on paper

44 x 30.5 inches

Andrew Holmquist

Tree 4, 2019

Colored pencil, wax pastel and

Graphite wash and oil on paper

44 x 30.5 inches

Andrew Holmquist, On Ramp, 2020, glazed stoneware, 32 x 19 x 5 inches

Andrew Holmquist

On Ramp, 2020

glazed stoneware

32 x 19 x 5 inches

Andrew Holmquist, Hillside, 2020, glazed stoneware, 29.5 x 15.25 x 6 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW: Andrew Holmquist, Hillside, 2020, and Mike Howat, Someday Afternoon, 2021

Mike Howat Since mid-2020, most days I’d take long walks around the neighborhood of the small city I live in. I found myself taking cursory glances into apartment building windows and wondering what other people were going through. Each window was a small, passing glimpse into someone’s life. Some have vibrant curtains, others fully closed vinyl blinds. Some lights are on, some off, some have pink grow lights.

The window paintings emerged out of that, as a way to both look outwards to an adjacen building from the vantage point of a personal, interior space, and also imply the neighboring apartment looking in towards the viewer.

Objects re ective of the current moment, or that have emotional density are scattered on the interior window sill—things like dystopian novels or beer bottles with labels anxiously torn off. Outside of the windows, the adjacent buildings reference apartments from my daily walks around the neighborhood. The paintings became an assembled collage of landscape, still life and interior from different places, meaningful objects and memories pulled together by the lighting to create a cogent space

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~Mike Howa

Studio view: Mike Howat, 2021. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Mike Howat

Racing Thoughts and Satellites, 2021

Acrylic on panel

24 x 15 inches

Mike Howat

Someday Afternoon, 2021

Acrylic on panel

22 x 14.5 inches

Olivia Schreine I feel a bit like a hunter-gatherer when I look outward. I am in search of the precise combination of light, color, form and texture that resonates with me. I love the combination of natural and arti cial light. I like a random scatter of leaves. I like lines of perspective. I like unexpected perspectives. I like looking out windows and going deep into re ections. I like a night sky lit up with reworks, holiday lights, streetlights, glow sticks. I like it to be something complicated, something that both satis es and brings up questions about what you are looking at. I like the way paint translates light and increases my sense of wondering what I am looking at. I like my paintings to be a little disorienting. I like the state I am in when I am being an active hunter-gatherer. I think taking in and noticing are antidotes to the ruts and deadening habits of daily busyness. I like being busy, but the balance is good. I think of it as a place called Quiet Quiet is a lack of sound but this place called Quiet isn’t always lacking in noise. It is a place where I am able to really see what is in front of me rather than look without absorbing. This example comes to mind when I try to explain the difference. Person A catches Person B looking at their watch and asks, “What time is it?” Person B looks again and says “4:15” or whatever. The rst time Person B looked at the watch they did not consciously take anything in. The second time they saw it and were able to process the information. When I am in the place called Quiet, I can see and experience a thing more intently I did not visit the place called Quiet during the throes of the pandemic. I did take some photos though.

I try to take a lot of photos as I move through my day – it’s part of my hunting and gathering. I dig through my photos to nd my sources. The nature of the photographic image also makes its way into how I represent landscape: depth of eld, distortion, focus/ lack of focus, odd light affects, cropping. Those elements play into my work as well – a sort of mediated layer Artists that remind me to be a good hunter-gatherer: Alex Katz, Leslie Baum, David Hockney, Peter Doig, Henri Matisse, Claire Sherman, Angelina Gualdoni, Roxane Hopper

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~Olivia Schreiner

Photograph courtesy of the artist

Olivia Schreiner

Untitled (sequins), 2021

Acrylic on canvas

44 x 33 inches

Olivia Schreiner

Untitled (string lights), 2021

Acrylic on canvas

44 x 33 inches

I grew up in the country in a very small town in Louisiana. Since I left home, I’ve always lived in cities, but my favorite getaway is eeing to the countryside. When I am stressed or stuck in my head in my studio, leaving town for the weekend and plein air landscape painting serves as a much-needed mental reset.

My paintings for this exhibition were painting during the early months of the Covid lockdown, when my stress levels were soaring but traveling to the country was not an option. I was working on a series of window paintings when the lockdown started and suddenly the window felt so relevant. Every day I spent my studio breaks on walks in the neighborhood looking in windows or trapped inside looking out. It felt like everything I missed was visible -- my family on facetime, the closed restaurants I used to frequent, the beaches closed to visitors—but it was all just beyond reach. The boundless world suddenly had constraints on it, paralleled by the window frame’s constraints on the composition.

~Sophie Treppendahl

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Sophie Treppendah

View of Sophie Treppendahl’s studio, courtesy of the artist.

INSTALLATION VIEW: Emma White, Cottagecore, 2021 and Sophie Treppendahl, DJ’s Collaging Desk, 2020

INSTALLATION VIEW: Sophie Treppendahl, DJ’s Collaging Desk, 2020 and Neon Window, 2020

Sophie Treppendahl

DJ’s Collaging Desk, 2020

Oil on canvas

40 x 32 inches

Sophie Treppendahl

Neon Window in Chief, 2020

Oil on canvas

40 x 30 inches

Emma Whit My paintings focus on depicting the outdoor world through the lens of human observation I mark every landscape with an indicator that I have been to this location, viewed it, and marked it with my presence. This marking of human presence comes out in various ways in my paintings. Often, I take symbols, shapes, or objects that I’ve found elsewhere and superimpose it onto a landscape so that it’s clear that the environment has been affected by human interaction.

Due to the pandemic, I have especially been focusing on natural settings closer to home, such as scraggly plants competing with powerlines and sidewalks, or swampy puddles in my neighbourhood parks. This is to emphasize that nature closer to home can be just as meaningful to humanity as a majestic landscape that is not as easily accessible without signi cant travel. I hope to emphasize that humankind and the natural world are not separate entities although they are often thought of as such.

My recent paintings are all of vertical orientation and in dimensions that are similar to my c ell phone screen as I often use photos that I’ve taken on my phone while on a walk around Toronto as my inspiration. The impact of technology on painting, as well as on our intake of natural imagery, cannot be ignored. I like to make paintings that look like they’ve been viewed through multiple lenses and may exist on multiple planes, as that is truly the case.

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~Emma White

View of Emma White’s studio, image courtesy of the artist

INSTALLATION VIEW , Emma White, Secret Life, 2021 and Fanfare, 2021

Emma White

Secret Life, 2021

Oil on Arches oil paper

22 x 15 inches

Emma White

Fanfare, 2021

Oil on Arches oil paper

22 x 15 inches

Emma White

Ceremony, 2021

Oil on Arches oil paper

15 x 11 inches

Emma White

Cottagecore, 2021

Oil on Arches oil paper

22 x 15 inches

All work copyright the artist and Carrie Secrist Gallery, ©2021. Any use, disclosure, copying or distribution of this document without prior written permission from the owner is strictly prohibited.

Pricing and availability of works of art listed in this document is subject to change without prior notice.

To view the exhibition Plain Air, please visit us at

900 West Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

312.491.0917

www.secristgallery.com

For more information, please contact Britton Bertran at 312.491.0917