NUANCE Recent Paintings by Sherry Cromwell-Lacy
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019 Front Gallery
“Nuance – Recent Paintings by Sherry Cromwell-Lacy,” is the first one-person exhibition for the well-known art curator, and former Director of Exhibitions at Kansas City Art Institute from 1972 – 1994. While Cromwell-Lacy is renowned for her cutting-edge contemporary shows and exhibitions of rare ethnographic art, few realize that throughout her career she has always been a practicing artist. Her abstract art works, in various scales, are as visually appealing as they are simultaneously elusive. Colors and forms shape-shift, appear and disappear, then effortlessly float to the surface. They embody the poetic, with references to landscape and an unabashed, if always delicate, ode to joy. Cromwell-Lacy’s sheer delight in painting is a tonic.
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center 2012 Baltimore Ave. KC MO 64108 www.leedy-voulkos.com | 816-474-1919
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
Artist Statement It’s such a curious thing what viewers see in paintings. I want my work to create a cause for some kind of wondering, for it to be intriguing, to hold one’s attention, and to get the kind of reaction as from any significant event that stays with you, a divulging of what is seen has something to do with what is not seen. In the studio there is a conversation going on in my mind about the work, I suppose you’d say it’s a dialogue, a sifting of input from a life-time of looking at art cultivating a range of opinions that shadow the making of the painting. Questioning, so as to keep the painting fresh, critical at one moment while in another a reinforcing push. Once color, shape, and marks appear on the canvas, the painting has an identity, an atmosphere, and I react to those first stages and the work starts to build, to reflect back, to yield. As I work it is important to not lose touch with the painting, to keep looking, attempting to keep the energy of its initial state and the nuance of its development. Painting is endless appraising and wrestling where any thing can be sacrificed if it will make a stronger painting; essentially it’s a matter of just working until I figure it out. Certainly there are those paintings that come fluidly together right at the onset, fewer layers, less frustration, and I think , “okay”, but so often I am drawn back and have the insight to see otherwise and allow the entire painting to re-open. While I’m working on a painting I spend lengths of time just staring at it, sitting at a distance, standing very close, different times of the day, whatever it takes to see it as objectively as possible. There are always parts I can’t bear to give up, yet I know for the painting to work as a whole it has to happen. Resorting to instinctive decisions and stylistic proclivities as a process or facility, can be a crutch, and cement certain tendencies into one’s work, not that I discount a recognizable character to one’s work, more that I am rather more fascinated with surprising myself. Getting fixated on one painting can also be stifling, so I have several paintings in progress at a time, often the problem in one painting is the solution in another. Other than the size stretcher bars I buy to make the canvas support and the choice of oil or acrylic, the paintings are not especially preconceived, they reach a final form through flux and multiple decisions in an attempt to clarify. Sherry Cromwell-Lacy is an artist and arts professional. Cromwell-Lacy holds a Fine Arts Degree from Kansas City Art Institute with graduate studies in art history and education. She has taught drawing and painting in the KCAI pre-college high school program, and multi-media classes for high school art students at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. She has exhibited in many group exhibitions with works in numerous private collections. She has served on public and private organization boards related to the visual and literary arts.. Formerly with Kansas City Art Institute she held positions as Director of Exhibitions/Visiting Artists Program, and Administrative Director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Cromwell-Lacy is past president of the Mid-America College Art Association and served six years as secretary of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, an affiliate of the American Museum Association. She has planned and chaired many conferences and symposiums, bringing to the educational forum distinguished and diverse scholars, artists, designers and conceptualists.
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
Excerpts from the Catalogue
Nuance | Recent Paintings by Sherry Cromwell-Lacy
Nuance Elizabeth Kirsch By the 1990s abstraction in the greater artworld was seen as passe. Installation, video, conceptual and politically inspired art forms ruled the museum and gallery worlds, and painting was all but swept overboard. But Cromwell-Lacy did not change course. Like most painters, she knew that cycles inevitably change in the artworld, as everywhere else, and abstraction presents one of the most profound opportunities for an artist to explore the worlds of color and form, not to mention any and all aspects of self, and the world.
Sublimely Alluring Sherry Cromwell-Lacy’s Honest Abstractions Christopher Leitch Immediately one doesn’t know what’s being seen in these paintings. The compositions are cosseted and the colors verging on tropical. The indefinite imagery depicts light and shadow and sometimes alludes to three dimensions. Are they maps? Still lives? Architecture studies? No matter. The determined edges of the pictures declare these as independent objects yet the sfumato shapes and colors and shadows hint at some infinity. The worked surfaces evince investigative thought evolving through drawing, scaling and brushing: phenomena resulting from painterly practice. Lacy’s fresh, confident hand layers the flat color with lightness and immediacy at human scale. That are cunningly made pictures, mature paintings from a cultivated and elegant mind. That hum with inevitability.
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
1. Myth oil on canvas, 2018, 42 x 40 inches $5,000
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
2. Blue Break-away oil on canvas, 2018, 44 x 36 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
3. Archetype oil on canvas, 2018, 44 x 36 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
4. Paradox oil on canvas, 2018, 42 x 36 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
5. Oasis oil on canvas, 2018, 42 x 36 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
6. La Luz oil on canvas, 2016, 40 x 38 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
7. Charisma oil on canvas, 2016, 36 x 40 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
8. Rondo oil on canvas, 2016, 30 x 30 inches $3,900
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
9. Allison’s Blue acrylic, 2017, oil on canvas, 40 x 38 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
10. Snow at the Equator oil on canvas, 2017, 30 x 30 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
11. Kismet oil on canvas, 2016-2017, 46 x 42 inches $5,000
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
12. Indigo Slips In oil on wood panel, 2016, acrylic, 18 x 14 inches $900
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
13. Scarlet Run-around oil on canvas, 2017, 18 x 14 inches $700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
14. Kyoto oil on canvas, 2017, 20 x 18 inches $900
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
15. Filigree oil on canvas, 2015, 14 x 18 inches $900
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
16. Calypso oil on canvas, 2018, 26 x 26 inches $900
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
17. Turquoise Tableta oil on canvas, 2018, 30 x 28 $900
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
18. Venus of Wollendorf oil on canvas, 2016, 18 x 16 $900
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
19. Yellow Drift oil on canvas, 2017, 38 x 28 inches $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
20. Plum Fan oil on canvas, 2018, 15 x 18 $700
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
21. Cosmos acrylic on canvas with Okawara paper, 2015, 36 x 36 inches $3,000
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
22. Persian Rug acrylic on canvas with Okawara paper, 2015, 40 x 40 inches $3,000
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
24. Nocturne I acrylic on gesso panel, 2016, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
25. Cool Pool oil on canvas, 2016, 18 x 16 $700
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
26. Could Be Ursa Major acrylic, collage on wood panel, 2015, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
27. Australia acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, triptych, 2015, overall 5 1/2 x 15 1/8 $750
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
28. Gulf acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2015, 15 x 11 1/2 $750
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
29. Modern acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2015, 15 1/4 x 11 1/2 $750
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
30. Pier acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2015, 15 1/4 x 11 1/4 $750
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
31. Untitled acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2016, 22 1/2 x 20 $400
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
32. Untitled acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2016, 22 3/4 x 20 $400
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
33. Untitled acrylic on 300 lb. Arches paper, 2016, 22 3/4 x 20 $400
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
34. Nocturne II acrylic on gesso panel, 2018, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
35. Nocturne III acrylic on gesso panel, 2018, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
37. Nocturne V acrylic on gesso panel, 2018, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
36. Nocturne IV acrylic on gesso panel, 2018, 12 x 12 $500
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
38. Onyx Filament acrylic, oil on canvas, 2018, 42 x 36 $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
November 2, 2018 - January 26, 2019
NUANCE | Sherry Lacy-Cromwell
39. Nuance acrylic, oil on canvas, 2018, 42 x 36 $4,700
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center