Sunday, September 16, 2012

George Bellows exhibit

It's been well over a month since my last blog post. The hiatus was not intentional; it just simply happened. During this period, I enjoyed a successful solo show at the Cameron Village Library. In fact, upon delivering five canvases for the library's circulation desk exhibit area, I was invited to add four more canvases to an upstairs display area. What started as a small show ended up being an expanded experience. My thanks to the staff of the Cameron Village Library for their support.

Over the Labor Day holiday, I took time to travel north and visit several exhibits in the Nation's Capitol. My primary focus was the huge George Bellows retrospective currently on display at the National Gallery of Art (catalog cover pictured above). Having lived in Bellows's home town (Columbus, Ohio), I came to appreciate his work through the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum of Art. This show is exceptional, and very motivating for me. Bellows's sense of bravura and energy in brushstroke have always attracted me, and his cityscapes of New York are gorgeous in their use of light and color.
I also visited the Corcoran Gallery of Art (pictured above) to see a Richard Diebenkorn exhibition featuring his famous Ocean Park series. The size and scope of this work was impressive, but I especially loved his smaller studies created to inspire his larger canvases. The Corcoran also had a moving photographic exhibit by the Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas, featuring images of horses, wolves and dogs. It was a wonderful weekend filled with art, something I needed after a fallow summer.