22 Dec Slate Gray Dec./Jan.: “Color Infatuation: Group Show Featuring Marshall Noice” + Class’s Classy Bling!
In December and January Telluride is clocked in shadow by late afternoon. But over those same two months, Slate Gray offers a break from the gloom. From December 19 – February 2, the gallery is celebrating”Color Infatuation: A Group Show featuring Marshall Noice.” Visit and experience the myriad ways he and other artists in the show celebrate color and light. Enjoy Noice’s vibrant new body of work , showcased alongside animated abstracts by Karen Scharer; encaustic layers of color by Amy Van Winkle; and more from Slate Gray’s talented stable.
Visit Slate Gray for the opening of the exhibition and the first Art Walk of 2025 on Thursday, January 2, 5 – 8pm. Marshall Noice will be in attendance; refreshments will be served.
An early winter trunk show features fine art jeweler, the equally colorful Petra Class. She is coming to own with her son Lucas and daughter-in-law Phoebe, both of whom work alongside her in her studio. The event takes place 12/27 – 12/29/24. Class’s bling underlines and enhances the color theme of the months.
Après ski event with DJ/musician with Petra Class is scheduled at Slate Gray 12/28, 4 – 6pm.
Go here for more about Amy Van Winkle.
Go here for more about Karen Scharer.
Go here for more about the Slate Gray’s history stable.
Ever fallen in love with a tree? The list of artists for whom landscapes in general and trees in particular have served as muses reads like the Who’s Who’s of the art world over time: French impressionist Claude Monet; German-American Hudson River School painter Albert Bierstadt; fine art photographer Ansel Adams to name a few stand-outs.
And also Marshall Noice who, as it happens, once apprenticed for Adams and lived in the legend’s world of many shades of gray – that is until Noice acknowledged his love, better passion, for landscapes, especially trees, and Mother Nature’s wild and crazy colors.
“When Noice later shifted his focus from black-and-white photography to painting, the new medium catalyzed a deep devotion to color.’Part of my infatuation with lots of color exists because I had related to the landscape almost exclusively through shades of gray for a long time,’ he explains. ‘When I started painting the landscape, color became almost an obsession…’ Color, Noice discovered, had an impact that far transcended its tangible presence in a two-dimensional painting. It provided an intense sensory experience, one he found to be ‘extremely intoxicating,’” said Rose DeMaris in the catalog that accompanies Noice’s work.
“I capture a sense of place, but it’s my sense, my color. It’s delicate, because color is a strange animal. I work to create tone and value in an expressive way that resonates with me. At times, my color is almost outrageous – on the edge of being out of control,” added the artist.
Not just colors alone, but adjacent colors are central to Noice’s images.
Noice explains further:
“…Because that’s where the emotional impact of color really is strongest. When you see quinacridone magenta next to cadmium orange, for instance, the conversation those two colors have triggers a lot of emotion for me. Another thing I’m really interested in is soft edges versus hard edges. They change the way the colors in the painting interact with each other, as well as how they communicate something emotional to me and, hopefully, to the viewer. We are all emotionally affected by color, and no two people are affected in the same way.”
For about 40 years and counting, Noice never met a sky or a tree he did not like. His vivid abstractions appear lit from the inside.
However, 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” – but an Expressionist with an Impressionist technique and a Fauve sense of coloration.
Note: Expressionism is defined as an art movement (and international tendency) that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. The “ism” spanned literature, music, theatre and architecture, as well as the visual arts. The aim of Expressionist artists was – and remains – to express an emotional experience, rather than a physical reality. Arguably the granddaddy of the movement was Vincent Van Gogh, today renowned for work that reflected his highly subjective, if disturbed view of the world.
And Fauvism? An early 20th-century art movement that broke away from traditional painting techniques. Fauvist paintings are known for their use of bright, unnatural colors, bold brushstrokes, and flat planes. Fauvist artists emphasized the emotional impact of color and composition on both the artist and the audience.
Case in point: Marshall 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 the artist lists Impressionist Pierre Bonnard, who made dreamy, abstracted landscapes of everyday life, and Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, who attempted to capture the spiritual resonance of a landscape in his soulful color fields. It was those iconic painters who helped Noice develop an intuitive and unique spin on his work.
“Rothko had created edges that heightened the sense of luminosity. I believe he understood the use of light better than anyone else. Light just emanates from his paintings,” explained Noice. “But it’s not really accurate to call Pierre Bonnard and Mark Rothko my influences. Truth is I unabashedly steal from both of them. Many of the color combinations in my work are taken directly from their paintings.”
For the slightly off-key way he deals with complementary colors to add dynamic tension to his work, Noice credits Joe Abbrescia.
But perhaps Noice’s greatest influence was Ansel Adams: “From him I gained the ability to see light.”
Noice claims he was born and nurtured to create fine art:
“I have been an unrepentant maker of marks for as long as I can remember. My grandmother kept drawings I did before the age of three. Prior to kindergarten I was obsessed for a time with making tiny people and animals from plastelina. I built elaborate dioramas with hundreds of clay figures. At one point I had to go see the doctor because the skin on the palms of my hands was rubbed away from softening the clay.
“In addition, my mother had a degree in art education and my dad’s older brother was a successful commercial artist. But it was my dad’s twin brother, a notable jazz trumpeter, who inspired me to embark on my first career as a professional musician. Even when I was on the road, however, the visual arts were part of my daily experience. I was always looking at the world through a camera lens and a sketch book and pen were always close at hand.”
About his process, Noice has this to say:
“I’m a studio painter. I enjoy making pastel sketches outdoors and often those sketches are the reference material I use for my paintings. I never work from photographs. My oils are done exclusively in the studio. It’s easier for me to make a painting that isn’t burdened by literal depiction. If I’m not confronting the actual scene while I work and the more I can keep my heart in the process – and my head out – the happier I am with the result.”
Noice is known to work on a dozen or more images at a time, allowing layers to dry 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.
“I am by nature a curious person. Frequently, when I’m in the thick of painting a picture, a question comes to mind. Typically it’s something like, ‘I wonder what it would look like if…’ When that question arises, I start a painting or, at least, make a sketch, so the idea doesn’t disappear. I diligently honor every ‘what if’ thought I’m given. It’s the essential part of my art practice that keeps dozens of unfinished paintings on my walls. And keeps my creative juices flowing.”
Since retiring as a photographer, Marshall Noice 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.
Before Sunrise, Wilson Peak, Noice.
Early Morning Frost, Noice.
Ice, Fall, Noice.
Light Breaking, Karen Scharer
Serene Horizon, Amy.Van Winkle.
Enjoy the View, Van Winkle
Petra Class:
“Color Infatuation” does not end on the walls of Slate Gray. This antidote to winter white and dark nights continues in the gallery’s jewelry cases with a trunk show featuring Petra Class & Co.
Trained as a silversmith in Germany, but now working in San Francisco, Petra Class was in the stable of the Telluride Gallery for years and now Slate Gray in the same location. The way the artist uses the colors of gems is similar to how painters use pigment, ultimately creating unexpected juxtapositions that are beautiful to behold – and to wear. Petra’s uncut gemstones are set into high-karat gold to create works that feature dynamic tension and quiet elegance
Lapis Lazuli Triangle Pendant
Oval Link Aquamarine Necklace
Pink Tourmaline Drop Pendant
Below are Petra answers questions about her life and work.
TIO: Rumor has it you have a very inventive, very restless mind and are easily bored. If true, how has that mindset impacted your life and your work?
PC: My busy mind has made my life and my work quite colorful – literally and metaphorically.
TIO: Back in Germany where you grew up, your father designed cars and custom hubcaps.Your brothers followed careers in science, so you took a left turn away from the practical endeavors of your family. What drew you to the arts versus a more traditional, family-blessed career path?
PC: The arts always have a playful quality to them and I felt very at home in all things artistic from an early age.
TIO: You hold a degree in art history and philosophy, but then you did advanced studies in metal arts. There you studied under Hermann Junger whom you credit with transforming jewelry into an art form. Please explain.
PC: I have to correct this: I didn’t finish my degrees – I switched to art school. Also: Herman Jünger was a friend and role model, I didn’t study under him. My teacher was Nikolaus Epp.
TIO: Why do you think German jewelry-makers have garnered such stellar reputations around the world?
PC: The education system in Germany is quite good. I was able to get a solid foundation in technical aspects of metal-smithing, as well as the design part. Both are needed.
TIO: Please describe the arc of your career from the early 1980s to the present. In what key ways have you and your work evolved and changed?
PC: My work became more playful after I moved to California. In the earlier years of my career I was more minimal and sculptural, then gemstones became an integral part of the design. But I think that in many ways now, as I am maturing (getting old, LOL,) I can use the whole spectrum of forms and colors I have explored in the past and that is a ton of fun.
TIO: In talking about two of your major influences, Piet Mondrian and Alexander Calder, you said: “It’s all about contrast, volume and rhythm.” Please explain both the influence of those artists and what you meant by that statement.
PC: Those two artists are just two great examples. All art is influencing. Mondrian was able in his abstractions to translate the rhythms of nature into more essential minimal shapes. I do the same when I arrange gem elements. Fibonacci could be named as an influence as well. Calder is just one artist who makes me laugh. He was so very playful….
TIO: Please talk about your favorite materials and your creative process.
PC: Gold and gemstones! The creative process is a lot like cooking. Find the flavors that entice me the most and combine them in ways that please the senses…..
TIO: In what ways, if any, did the Telluride Gallery, now Slate Gray, and Telluride itself impact your career?
PC: The Telluride Gallery was a venue that let art and applied art co-exist. And I know Slate Gray shares the same ethos. I think that’s a fabulous concept. Telluride itself is a magical place and I can’t wait to be back!
TIO: We held on to your artist statement from back when we last interviewed you in – wait for it – 2006. You concluded that statement by saying: “The one thing that guides me remains the same – to try to listen to the inner quality of each element and create a competition that does it justice.” Does that statement still hold?
PC: Absolutely!
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