REBECCA ALLAN In Voltaire’s Garden
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
Front Cover: Rebecca Allan, Voltaire’s Garden (Love Letter to Lebanon), 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 52” x 60” Title Page: (Opposite): Rebecca Allan, In Voltaire’s Garden - Installation image Printed on the occasion of the exhibition Rebecca Allan “In Voltaire’s Garden at David Richard Gallery June 11 - August 18, 2018
Published by: David Richard Gallery, LLC, 1570 Pacheco Street, Suite E2 Santa Fe, NM 87505 www.DavidRichardGallery.com 505-983-9555 | 212-882-1705 DavidRichardGalleries DavidRichardGallery Gallery Staff: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, Managers
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Artwork: © 2010 - 2018 Rebecca Allan Catalogue: © 2018 David Richard Gallery, LLC, Santa Fe, NM | New York, NY Catalogue Design: David Eichholtz and Richard Barger, David Richard Gallery, LLC, Santa Fe, NM | New York, NY
DAVID RICHARD GALLERY
REBECCA ALLAN In Voltaire’s Garden
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Friendship is a trigger for the cultivation of wonder. It is also a springboard, giving us courage to take action, or to deepen our work as we learn from another’s discipline. This body of work was created in response to travels in New Mexico, Kentucky, Lebanon, and Norway; and it is undergirded by the impact of friendships in those places—with naturalists, gardeners, and painters. The landscape painter Robert Berlind (1938–2013), whose sharp elegance always reminded me of the playwright Voltaire, always made me think about the movements of vision and how we integrate the visible and interior worlds in painting.
My abstract paintings are catalyzed by the deep relationship that I have with deserts and deciduous landscapes, whether at the confluence of the Hudson and Harlem rivers that I see from my studio window, vibrant colors of gardens and in France or Lebanon, or the severe grandeur of northern Northern New Mexico. I still believe that there is an essential place for the observation and translation of the landscape in our art. This is more important now than it has ever been, as the agencies of our government that are enlisted with protecting our wild lands and waters inconceivably refute that mission.
A painting, like a mountain, is a layered object. Beneath the “resolved” upper surface is a burial ground of efforts and failures that have been scraped away, reworked, slashed and jettisoned. Slashing, tearing, and flooding are forces that shape the land, and alter us. We are aware of these in relation to the rending of the ozone layer, or the devastation of streams filling with mining debris. In Voltaire’s play Candide, the naïve protagonist accepts that life is filled with difficulty, but he says that we must all cultivate our own gardens….and that is the only way—affirms his tutor, Pangloss—to make life bearable. My paintings are, like gardens, an oasis for those who care about the enduring beauty of the landscape and who want to live in a world that contains the inconceivable complexity and ravishing beauty of the Earth.
Rebecca Allan June 2, 2018
Rebecca Allan Garden During the Eclipse, 2017 Acrylic on paper 5” x 15.5”
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Rebecca Allan Voltaire’s Garden (Love Letter to Lebanon), 2016 Acrylic on canvas 52” x 60”
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Rebecca Allan Ice and Moss Mountain Field, 2015 Acrylic on canvas 30” x 30”
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Rebecca Allan Techtonic Choreography, 2013 Acrylic on paper 5.75” x 17”
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Rebecca Allan From Geirangerfjord Norway to Pine Mountain Kentucky, 2014-17 Acrylic on canvas 64” x 60”
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Rebecca Allan Phosphorescent Mesa, 2016 Acrylic on canvas 11” x 14”
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Rebecca Allan Chaparral in Winter, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 54” x 24”
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Rebecca Allan Night River Near Geirangerfjord, Norway, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 11” x 13”
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Rebecca Allan The Pedernal with Lavender Sky, 2016 Acrylic on paper 6.5” x 9”
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Rebecca Allan Peach Landscape near Ojo Caliente, 2017 Acrylic on paper 5.75” x 8”
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Rebecca Allan High Road to Taos along the Rio Grande, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 42” x 50”
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Rebecca Allan Tilting Sky and Grey Mesa, 2016 Acrylic on paper 6” x 8”
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Rebecca Allan Deep Purple Mesa, 2016 Acrylic on paper 6.75” x 9”
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Rebecca Allan Rain in the Arroyo, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 14” x 11”
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Rebecca Allan Lemonade Springs Mesa (for Wallace Stegner), 2017 Acrylic on canvas 11” x 14”
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Rebecca Allan Black Mesa with Emerald Pool, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 24” x 18”
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Rebecca Allan Juniper Trees in a Culvert / Taos, New Mexico, 2017 Acrylic on canvas 24” x 18”
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Rebecca Allan Grenadine Red Canyon (Abiquiu), 2016 Acrylic and peel collage on canvas 52” x 60”
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Rebecca Allan Landscape for 18 Musicians/Taos (after Steve Reich), 2017 Acrylic on canvas 30” x 40”
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Rebecca Allan Terraced Mesa and Black Hills, 2017 Acrylic on paper 6.5” x 9”
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Rebecca Allan Bitterroot Mesa, 2017 Acrylic on paper 6” x 8”
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DAVID RICHARD GALLERY