b. j. spoke gallery’s “Artists’ Choice” exhibit this coming month will compare and contrast artists’ interpretations of subject matter and styles.
Gallery members invite artists they respect and admire to show with them.
For example, gallery member and New Hyde Park resident Katherine Criss invited Huntington artist Caitlyn Shea to show her painting “Predator.”
Shea’s smiling wolf reflects surreal danger and Criss’s photograph, “Broken,” the window seems menacing.
Member artist Liz Ehrlichman invited Ronnie Sussman, her longtime friend.
Recently they have been painting portraits.
Grandchildren and friends alike rebel at being asked to sit still for long periods.
Sussman works from a photograph that she finds and likes, pinning a print of it to her easel. She chooses the parts of the photo that will be in her portrait, then invents other parts of the painting.
Ehrlichman works from a photograph that she has taken and liked. She crops it in Photoshop and corrects the light, then projects it on a TV screen.
Both Sussman and Ehrlichman paint alla prima, right on the canvas, with no under-drawing to begin with.
Both of them work using successive approximations and a lot of overpainting, until the work begins to take shape and look right.
The exhibition also includes b.j. spoke member artists Richard Anello, John Bell, Barbara Grey, Barbara V. Jones, Robert Korval, Lili Maglione, Diane Marxe, Nicolette Pach, Cindy Shechter, Connie Wain, Bert Winsberg and Kasia Wittie.
“Artists’ Choice” is on view from Wednesday, Jan. 4 until Sunday, Jan. 29 at b.j. spoke gallery at 299 Main St. in Huntington.
The opening reception for “Artists’ Choice” is on Saturday, Jan. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m.
