October 28, 2009
“Contemporary Icons: Tempera,” an exhibit of nationally recognized artists who work in the historic egg tempera technique, is offered at the Westfield State College Downtown Art Gallery, 105 Elm St., Westfield from Nov. 3 through Dec. 5. A free public reception for the artists is scheduled from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4.
The tempera artists are from various parts of the country and include Mark Meunier, Carol O’Neill, Diane Savino, Madeline von Foerester, Jon Gernon, and Alex Garcia.
A Gallery talk by Hatfield artist Diane Savino is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 6, followed by a concert by Northampton-based Peter Blanchette, composer and inventor of the 11-string archguitar. A $10 donation is requested for the concert.
Blanchette is an internationally acclaimed recording artist who has performed in such venues as NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As a composer, he has contributed music to such television programs as HBO’s Sex and the City and PBS’ Inside the Tuscan Hills, as will as other film projects.
“With this combination of classical artwork and performance by the internationally known musician Peter Blanchette, the Downtown Gallery offers a new level of artistic experience that we hope many members of the Westfield community will enjoy,” said Evan S. Dobelle, president of Westfield State College.
“Contemporary Icons: Tempera is the second teaching exhibit on this medium that has been featured at the college,” said Faith Lund, gallery curator. “It has been planned to correlate with a Renaissance art history course and a painting class that incorporates the medium of egg tempera.”
During the Renaissance, painters dedicated themselves to rendering the landscape, with exquisite detailed depictions of trees, flowers, plants, changing skies. Portraiture also developed as a favorite genre, with painters integrating history, myth and narrative into the picture plane, Lund said.
“This egg tempera exhibit features painters who have chosen egg tempera as their definitive medium, but use it with a contemporary sensibility,” she said. “Their works represent some fresh, modern approaches to an archaic medium, which has shown endurance into the 21st century.”
Meunier is a widely known as a painter of landscapes. He has begun to segregate elements of nature and present them in an iconic format, which is true both to the Renaissance and Post-modern eras.
O’Neill also carries on the tradition of examining nature from life. She employs detritus of leaves and weaves them into the delicate layers of color. Strokes of color are laid transparently to emit light and to create outlines of veins.
Savino tends to straddle both the world of nature and portraiture. She is a visual storyteller, who integrates the observed with the imagination. She has married glass to her painting process, creating windowpanes to her worlds. Her works recall the stained glass found in the Renaissance cathedrals, and are rampant with symbolism, which was utilized in the Renaissance.
Von Foerester’s work is influenced by the Flemish masters who used both egg tempera and oil paint together—the mische technique. Her paintings emulate these masters with their penchant for infinitesimal detail and use of transparent overlays.
While Meunier and O’Neill examine the natural world, and Savino and Von Foerester create worlds from the imagination, John Gernon and Alex Garcia draw inspiration from the figure. Gernon focuses on portraiture of the common man, often depicting the more marginalized.
Garcia examines his sitters with minute detail, encapsulating the texture of skin, wrinkles and hair on his panels. The linear markings of color, like colored threads, tie the portraits together. There is the sensation of flesh and a visceral element of skin; the portraits are very human and humane at the same time. These soliloquies take center stage because of the sensitivity of his brushstroke.
The gallery is open 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 2 to 7 p.m. Thursdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, contact gallery curator Faith Lund at flund@wsc.ma.edu.
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