Winter Showcase Exhibition

THE WINTER SHOWCASE

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The Winter Showcase An Exhibition of Extraordinary Works by Twelve Artists Working in Color Abstraction to Hyperrealism

These artists each illustrate the wide range of genres and painting styles represented at LewAllen Galleries, which has served to build the gallery's reputation over the course of its five decades of existence.

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Woody Gwyn, Wind Shift, Oil on canvas, 96" x 72"

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FORREST MOSES' (1934-2021) paintings of serene woodlands and placid bodies of water emphasize both the tranquility of their subject matter and the eloquence of their understated gestures. He presents an art of intimation rather than disclosure, where seasons are suggested by subtle color harmonies, expertly balanced compositions include no more than is necessary in the service of evocation, and a uniquely refined and fluid elegance informs each and every brushstroke.

Forrest Moses New England Woods with Pond, 2002 Oil on canvas, 34" x 36"

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Forrest Moses Bosque with Blue, 2004 Oil on canvas, 40" x 96" 5

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TOM PALMORE's ultra-real renderings of animals in oil and acrylic offer a unique and often comical juxtaposition of technical literalism and surreal, imaginative context—questioning the established conventions of photography and painting, especially as evident in the portrait genre.

Palmore’s witty and whimsical portraits take our humans instinct toward personifications of animals to an extreme. It’s been said of the artist that he approaches each painting as though it were commissioned by the subject itself. This inversion of role between artist and subject is perhaps one of the predominant ways Palmore achieves the illusionary quality so intrinsic to his work. When asked what his paintings are about, he says, “They’re about other earthlings that we share this planet with…and about our relationship with them.” Palmore’s paintings have a masterly eloquence that elevates his subjects’ status and renders them in oil and acrylic with the dignity, even personality, suggestive of his view of their full partnership on the earth with humans.

Tom Palmore Curious Fox, 2021 Oil on canvas, 30" x 40"

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Tom Palmore Young Panda, 2016-21 Oil on canvas, 36" x 48"

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JIVAN LEE has a rapidly growing reputation

as a leading figure of contemporary landscape painting, known for his vibrant sense of color and light and his textural application of paint. His powerful work incites a visceral involvement with the landscape, a dynamic mirrored by the artist’s highly physical approach to surface and his intense on-location painting process.

Lee’s art is a visual testament to his close engagement with the landscape and his attunement to the diverse interrelated forces operating within it. By design, his plein air practice requires him to paint the land as it changes before him—the sunrise as it illuminates the earth in the morning, or an afternoon storm as it gathers strength before unburdening or dissipating. His art stresses the powerful, interlocking forces at play in the natural world, suggesting that his paintings are but snapshots within a dynamic and ceaseless metamorphosis.

Jivan Lee The Mountain Beyond the Fields, 2020 Oil on linen, 60" x 80" 10

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Jivan Lee Morning Assembly, 2017 Oil on canvas, 40" x 30" 12

Jivan Lee Thirty-Three (Happy Birthday), 2017-18 Oil on panel, 60" x 48" 13

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FRITZ SCHOLDER (1937-2005) is a pivotal figure in

American art history, credited with reimagining the portrayal of Indigenous people in contemporary art. Moving away from the traditional, romanticized stereotypes that had dominated previously in American art, Scholder instead applied the visual languages of German Expressionism and Pop Art to convey the contemporary reality of Indigenous people. As his career continued, Scholder’s art broadened to reveal his wide-ranging interests in mythology and the occult — topics that extended Scholder’s imagery into realms rich with spiritual and psychological metaphor.

Fritz Scholder Portrait in Landscape with Standing Dog, 1980 Oil on canvas 80" x 68"

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Fritz Scholder Buckskin Indian (First State), Ed. 37/70, 1974 Original lithograph on paper, 30" x 22" 16

Fritz Scholder Indian with Pistol, Ed. 50/150, 1978 Original lithograph on paper, 22" x 30" 17

Fritz Scholder Man and Snake, 1999 Oil on panel, 15" x 11" 18

Fritz Scholder Academy Portrait, 1996 Oil &acrylic on canvas 48" x 30" 19

LINDA STOJAK is regarded for her highly nuanced and

evocative portrayal of the human figure, sensitizing viewers to the indelible aura of the feminine spirit. Stojak’s spectral paintings may be seen as inquiries into materiality and presence, both physical and symbolic. Though her paintings have been described as “psychological self-portraits,” they remain in possession of a resonance that is broadly universal, a quality evoked through minimal, anonymous figuration and elemental atmospheres that are neither conditional nor specific. In their expressive, painterly openness and aching emotional charge, they offer empathy and fellowship.

Linda Stojak Untitled (Figure 112), 2019 Oil on canvas, 48" x 36"

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John Fincher Companion: Shiki, 2015 Oil on linen, 70" x 30" 22

John Fincher, After Delacroix, 2017, Oil on linen, 34" x 32

JOHN FINCHER's art, distinguished by a singular blend of sensuality and authentic realism, explores diverse art historical and personal references to offer new understandings of America's natural and cultural landscapes. Exercising a profound economy of means, his works of nature-based imagery derive startling emotional resonance from a combination of rigorously balanced composition, nuanced brushwork, dramatic shadowing, and the application of intense points of contrasting colors to punctuate significant visual elements.

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Emily Mason Sheer, 2017 Oil on canvas, 43.5" x 35.5" 24

Emily Mason Ahoy, 2017 Oil on canvas, 28" x 24" 25

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Emily Mason (1932-2019) is an icon of lyrical

abstraction with an established place of prominence in American art history. Her art demonstrates a careful sense of structure, juxtaposing sweeping, luminous space with robust brushwork, drips, and layers of color. In her engaging compositions, the gentle waft of rich colors and paint densities reflect the traceries of an artistic life well led. She plumbs a rich internal reservoir of memory and feeling, filled from a lifetime of looking, in order to draw essences from the experiences that inflect her work, especially the beauty she sees in nature.

Emily Mason Collude, 2018 Oil on canvas, 30" x 24"

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John Nieto (1936-2018) is a leading figure in American

contemporary art, celebrated for his emotionally resonant paintings of Southwestern, Native American, and wildlife subjects, rendered in heightened, expressive color. Nieto was known as a brilliant colorist, and in all of the works in this exhibition, his use of color is raw, expressive, and intuitive. Nieto was inspired by both his own heritage and his deep study of the history and culture throughout the Southwest. He is renowned today for his richly modulated images of Indigenous warriors, fancy dancers, chieftains, and artisans, as well as his portraits of other contemporary and historical icons of the Southwest John Nieto Kiowa Delegate, 1990 Oil on canvas, 60" x 48"

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above: Ben Aronson Dome de L'Institute, Paris, 2006 Oil on panel, 12" x 12" right: Ben Aronson Via Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, 2009 Oil on panel, 12" x 12"

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BEN ARONSON is recognized as one of America’s most respected painters of the contemporary urban landscape. With paintings included in the permanent collections of more than fifty museums, Aronson’s paintings of the material sensations of the city activate both memory and the imagination. The most recent exhibition of new work by the artist, entitled Views from Above, featured paintings that reorient the viewer to a higher, more contemplative vantage point: the rooftops. In these paintings, the viewer is situated high off the ground, the visceral tumult of city life receding from view and its clamor reduced to a low hum.

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Ben Aronson Santa Monica Rooftops, 2019 Oil on panel, 48" x 32" 32

Ben Aronson Southern California Coast, 2019 Oil on panel, 72" x 60" 33

Brian Rutenberg’s response to the natural world melds

together both the seen and the imagined in masterful combinations of color and generously applied oil paint. His style is conspicuous and recognizable: high-keyed, fauvist-inflected color applied to the canvas with rich physicality and vigorous texture, revealing an ecstatic alertness to nature’s beauty. His vibrant, energetically choreographed compositions assert themselves with an idiosyncratic muscularity that bursts forward from the surfaces of his canvases.

Over the course of his career, Rutenberg has moved away from the literal landscape in order to explore what he calls “sustained meditations on the sheer transformative power of looking.” Even though his paintings are populated with references to vaguely recognizable forms—trees, horizon, bodies of water—his work is anchored in a reverence for the aesthetic properties of paint itself. His paintings reflect a desire to immerse his viewers not only in the universe of the landscape, but more specifically in the universe of painting—which, to Rutenberg, has always manifested an artist’s state of wonder.

Brian Rutenberg Banner of the Coast 4, 2021 Oil on paper, 22.5" x 30"

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Brian Rutenberg Under the Pines 7, 2020 Oil on paper, 22.5" x 30" 37

In a career that spanned seven decades and two continents, ENRICO DONATI (1909-2008) is known today for creating works in a variety of media that are heralded for their provocative and complex nature. Gaining notice beginning in the 1940s, the Italian-American painter’s work was championed by both the Surrealists (André Breton wrote, “I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May....”) and later the Abstract Expressionists (the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery mounted five solo exhibitions for Donati from 1954-1960. His art was shown alongside the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and others). Donati’s art, however exemplary of both movements, defies fitting neatly into either category. Instead, his mysterious and genre-defying work mirrors a lifelong study of science, geology, and archaeology, presenting an ever-evolving philosophical inquiry into nature, life, and time.

Enrico Donati San Gimignano XVII, 1979 oil and sand on canvas, 47.63" x 50"

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com © 2021 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 42 Artwork © Each Artist