Telluride Inside... and Out | Telluride Arts: Art Walk

30 Jun Telluride Arts: Art Walk

Posted at 07:40h in Culture, Events, Fine Art, Other Events by Susan Viebrock 0 Comments

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Back in the glitter and grit of the 1970s, artists such as Philip Pearlstein – a heavyweight painter who happens to be part of the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art’s illustrious stable (and the uncle of Telluride’s former mayor and county commissioner Elaine Fischer, also a painter) – converted from Abstract Expressionism to large, realistic images. Other artists followed, all eager to reengage the physical world – but more like documentary filmmakers than besotted fans. Their images were matter-of-factly whatever they were whether landscapes or real men and women. And most of these artists, Fairfield Porter among them. celebrated the ordinary with aplomb, bourgeois life in the tradition of Vuillard and Bonnard. Why? because as Porter famously said, “what he’s doing (referring to Vuillard) seems ordinary, but the extraordinary is everywhere.” And in the case of those aforementioned art world giants, the work was concrete in the details, but abstract as a whole.

Underwater, Nicole Finger

Bingo!

Finding the extraordinary in everyday life, in everyday people about sums up the work of artist and local Nicole Finger, who places her primary image dead center of the scene, then oh so casually dresses up her subject matter in abstract patterns of water and reflected light.

Unlike her aforementioned antecedents, however, Nicole never had to, ahem, swim against the tide of abstraction. For Nicole, abstraction was never an orthodoxy, just an option – though her work still manages to embody a core truism about art: what is real is never the external form.

Sam, Pool, Nicole Finger

What’s real for Nicole, at least as real as her subjects (her daughter, a bear, a man in sunglasses in hyper close-up, etc.) is the physical properties of the paint, a reality celebrated by the AbExers, and what lends – and enhances– her subjects’ “wetness.”

“I am continuously working with the push/pull between depicting high realism and representing the brushstroke and the paint. Ultimately I want the paint to win.”

Nicole Finger’s latest body of work is on display at Telluride Art’s Gallery 81435. Her show is entitled “Wet.”

The subtext of “Wet” is metaphysical and metaphorical: the ever-changing nature of water underlines the impermanence of life. In this body of work, Nicole was trying also trying to capture a moment in time, again a precious, unrepeatable event, an instant that forged a connection between viewer (Nicole, the artist) and her subject (human or animal). Such mounts also speak to the inevitability of change.

Gap, Nicole Finger

Growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, Nicole was greatly influenced by her artist mother and her father’s lifelong passion, thoroughbred racehorses. Following the death of her father to cancer in 2005, Nicole honored his wish that she use her gifts as an artist to celebrate the majestic animals he loved, so for years, she painted horses in tribute. And in that powerful body of work there was no mistaking the sadness in their eyes. Again, still, what is real in a work of art is not the external form. But the emotion that generates that form.

After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Nicole worked in various art-related fields, including illustration, in both California and Colorado. Her work continues to show locally and nationally. Nicole currently lives in Telluride, Colorado with her husband and two children.

Bear Fishig, Nicole Finger.
(This work is on display at Gold Mountain Gallery)

Nicole’s show at Gallery 81435 opens with Telluride Art’s First Thursday Art Walk, conceived as a way to deepen ties between Telluride’s business and cultural economies, exposing locals and guests to emerging and established artists and the town’s retail scene. Art Walk is a festive celebration of the arts in downtown Telluride for art lovers, community, and friends. Twenty-two venues host receptions from 5 p.m.- 8 p.m. to showcase new exhibitions and artists. A free Art Walk Map offers a self-guided tour that can be used at any time to find galleries that are open most days. Listen to Open Art Radio on KOTO from 12-1 p.m. on first Thursdays to hear interviews with the artists. Maps are available at participating venues and at the Telluride Arts offices located in the Stronghouse Studios + Gallery at 283 South Fir Street.

Other shows of note:

Ah Haa School for the Arts: Daniel Tucker Gallery. Opening reception featuring a sneak peek at all of the donated artwork to be featured in the school’s upcoming 23rd auction on Friday, July 17. Pre-bidding welcome.

Ah Ha, East Gallery: Ann O’Brien Gonzales

Anne O”Brien Gonzales at Ah Haa

Ann O’Brien Gonzales is intrigued by the way still-lives offer a slightly voyeuristic, private glimpse into another world. In love with the common objects that make up our daily lives – flowers, food, a cherished vase – her paintings depict shallow space and unusual shapes in inventive colors. Gonzales’ art heroes are Cezanne, Van Gogh and, of course, Matisse. Like them, her work relies on color, form, and pattern – in that order. The artist can be best described as a colorist, who works in oil and mixed-media using collaged elements, beeswax, dry pigments, graphite, and/or pastels. In addition to usual brushes, she employs scrapers, brayers, and many other mark-making tools. The process involves multiple layers and responding to what appears on the surface as the painting evolves. The aim is to evoke the sense of joy she experience when she creates.

Lustre, an Artisan’s Gallery features the work of Marshall Noice. (His images also grace the walls of 221 South Oak, one of Telluride’s most popular restaurants).

High Country Summer, Noice

Marshall Noice never met a sky or a tree he did not like. For 36 years, the artist has been obsessed by landscapes. What we see in his work resembles the outside world the artist depicts much in the way a guitar case resembles a guitar: Noice is not painting a grove of trees for instance. He is depicting his emotional response to a grove of trees, which makes him an Expressionist for those who require an “ist” or an “ism” with an Impressionist technique and a Fauve sense of color.

Since retiring as a photographer, Noice has earned a national following as a contemporary Expressionist artist with work in galleries in Santa Fe, Jackson Hole, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and other hot spots such as Telluride.

Mossy Gorge, Noice

Noice, who is a self-taught painter, has literally spent tens of thousands of hours perfecting his style in oils, working in his Kalispell, Montana studio five days a week when he is not on the road. Among his influences he lists Impressionist Pierre Bonnard, who made dreamy, abstracted landscapes of everyday life, and Abstract Expressionist Marc Rothko, who attempted to capture the spiritual resonance of a landscape in his color fields, for helping him develop an intuitive and unique spin on his work. For the slightly off-key way he deals with complementary colors to add dynamic tension to his work, Noice credits Joe Abbrescia.

Noice works on a dozen or more images at a time, allowing layers to before adding the next up to 1- to 15 applications of paint for texture and pop. It can be weeks, even years, before the artist declares a work done.

West of Town, Noice

In his newest body of work, the artist has used colors that are close to one another in terms of value and chroma, resulting in highly charged paintings that can at times be deliberately unsettling, but always exciting.

Julia Buckwalter is featured at Telluride Arts’ Gallery 81435.

Clouds, Buckwalter

Clouds is a series of large-scale paintings by the Southwest artist. Inspired by time spent watching and studying the great wide-open skies of Colorado and Utah, Clouds focuses on the sky as a playground of dancing shape-shifting, atmospheric wonder. It is another show, like Wet, though focusing on color and light, that speaks to the beauty and impermanence.

Clouds, Buckwalter

Born in 1984 in Cairo, Egypt and raised in Orem, Utah, Julia is a painter and lover of desert and mountain landscapes. Her childhood was heavily influenced by lengthy visits to Utah’s national parks and the Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where the iconic artist Georgia O’Keeffe lived and painted.

Clouds, Buckwalter

Buckwalter is passionate about observing and portraying the open sky, particularly the movement, formation, and coloration of clouds. She received her B.A. in Painting from Pennsylvania State University, where her landscape photography from her studies abroad in Australia and New Zealand were featured. Her work has been exhibited in Colorado, Utah, and Delaware. She lives and works throughout the Southwest.

Telluride Gallery of Fine Art:

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art features original work by past artists in their stable such as Christo, Jime Dine, William Matthews, Marcia Myers, Philip Pearlstein and Picasso, and original work from the present stable. The exhibition coincides with One-Of-A-Kind, a jewelry invitational showcasing unique pieces from 12 studio jewelers and a 100-age catalog.