The Little Gallery

CAPTURING CAPE COD: Works by Christie Velesig

Come experience thirty-nine works by the incredibly talented artist Christie Velesig, on view through July 17, at the Little Gallery of the Cahoon Museum of American Art.

An award winning professional artist and instructor, Christie Cardillo Velesig has lived and painted on Cape Cod for over twenty years. Having a love of boats since childhood in Rhode Island, it is no wonder she specializes in Marine paintings. She is a member of The American Society of Marine Artists and has had numerous Museum and Gallery solo exhibitions and has consistently won awards in juried exhibitions. Christie is recognized for her unique ability to combine both contemporary and classical style with her use of color and subject matter. Her concentration on color theory allows her to master a wonderful sense of light and distance in her paintings.

Christie is past president of the Cape Cod Art Association and co-founder of “21” – a group of professional women artists. Her work is in many private and corporate collections throughout the United States, Canada, Ireland, and England, and Australia.

SPONTANEITY AND MEMORY: New Works by Taylor Fox

Cape Artist Taylor Fox from Orleans, Massachusetts was influenced by the New England tradition of landscape painting from early childhood. He has memories of “hunting” the local landscape for subject matter as a teenager and credits real life experiences as the fodder that drives him to create paintings today. Using his art as a narrator, Taylor’s paintings are an honest view of the towns, beaches, and houses that shape his memories of year-round life on Cape Cod. His often poetic, sometimes irreverent subject matter is indicative of an artist who remains loyal to his own aesthetic sensibilities. Unusual perspectives, unkempt lawns, and peanut butter sandwiches grant viewers humorous, often surprising visual essays in brilliant color.

In addition to earning his BFA in Painting from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, Fox cites several Cape Cod painters as artistic influences, noting in particular his tutelage under Rosalie Nadeau and his apprenticeship with muralist Hans De Castellane.

RECENT WORK: by Vincent Amicosante

Gallery Talk with Vincent Amicosante, November 9 at 11 a.m.

Vincent Amicosante’s paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States, including the Cahoon Museum of American Art, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Cotuit Center for the Arts and the Harmon Gallery in Wellfleet, MA. He is a member of the Copley Society of Art in Boston, MA. Trained in New York City’s School of Visual Arts, he has established a reputation as a magic realist painter.

Vincent explains that “I love to paint, to make paintings. Everything about my life is part of the process of making a painting. Concepts are a large part of my work and the journey and invention are drawn from everything I experience. It is run through a filter and catalogued to be used later. I collect the objects: tea pots, cups, tricycles or flowers, and then I use photographs and drawings to compile a collage. From that I make a drawing to scale and transfer it to the canvas or panel. The process is as fulfilling as the finished piece, often taking weeks before I start painting. It is my language, and after 35 marketplace on a larger scale. I consider having my work included in museum shows, and participating in the 2009 Biennale Internazionale Dell' Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy as my most significant accomplishments to date.”

Several of the works in this show are related to Vincent’s series of paintings entitled “Erotic Fruit” that he has been working on for the past four years. The painting “Raspberries” is a smaller version of the current works that are painted on a larger scale.  In the pieces “Montilcino” and “Firenze, Panorama da San Miniato” he positions the fruit as the main subject, out of proportion to the landscape they reside in, adding weight to their symbolic nature.  In addition there are several recent paintings from different projects that give the viewer a range of Vincent’s abilities. His work is as much about the development of a concept as it is about his ability as a painter.

Vincent Amicosante, Wandering Amalfi,  oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

GEORGIA ROOTED: Boat Scenes by Scott Coleman

TUESDAY TALK with Scott Coleman on October 5, at 11 a.m.

Scott is a native Georgian and it is there that he maintains his permanent studio.  Studies include a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia, various classes from the Atlanta College of Art, and from painters of note around the U.S.

 Scott is probably best known as a watercolor painter and has conducted workshops throughout the Southeastern U.S., as well as in France, Spain, and Italy. It was during these trips to the Mediterranean that this boat series began to emerge.  The saturated colors and opportunity to break such a common subject into a more abstract form led him to these images.

Drawing has also been a passion with Scott and his efforts in pencil are now gaining recognition as their exhibitions are becoming more widespread along with his watercolors.  

Scott is current working on his daily cupcake series where he posts a painting of a cupcake once a day. For further information go to Scott’s blog at http://www.scottscupcakes.blogspot.com/

SIREN'S SONG: Sailor's Valentines by Sandi Blanda

Gallery Talk with Sandi Blanda, August 10 at 11 a.m.

Sandi Blanda spent most of her early childhood growing up on Long Island and combing the beaches in search of the perfect seashell. In 1983 she saw her first sailor’s valentine, and set out to create and educate herself about this romantic Victorian folk art that captured her heart. Never would she take any seashell for granted again.

Her sailor’s valentines found an immediate audience at her first show in 1984 at the Aaron Faber Gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Family responsibilities allowed her to produce a small number of quality pieces annually. Choosing not to do reproductions, Sandi set out to develop a personal style that was immediately identifiable by her abundant use of flowers and lacy technique. Her unconventional messages such as “Love Me Tender,” “Dare to Dream,” “Marry Me,” and “Beneath the Surface Lies Our Future” replaces standard Victorian adorations.

In 2000, The Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, MA mounted a solo exhibited of Sandi’s sailor’s valentines. Delighted viewers persuaded her to develop a valentine workshop. Sandi was selected to incorporate an original Martha Cahoon painting in a sailor’s valentine for the museum’s permanent collection. This work, entitled Martha’s Valentine, is included in this exhibition. She enjoys restoring antique valentines and lectures on their history. She is the only contemporary artist named in John Fondas’ book. Sandi’s work is showcased in several magazines as well as Sailors’ Valentines, Their Journey Through Time and in 2009 Claire Murray selected her as one of 16 featured in her new book Women and the Sea.

The self-taught artist is never lacking for inspiration to fuel her passion. Changing seasons, a walk in the country, a newly discovered flower or just listening to some rock/classical/hip hop music can feed her imagination. In 2006 Sandi relocated to Plymouth, MA and finds additional inspiration in America’s hometown whenever she walks along the harbor. Sand is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who of American Women. 

Sandi Blanda, Martha's Mermaid, sailor's valentine around Martha Cahoon's Mermaid, mixed media

   Doug Amidon, Dinner from the Sea,

   polychromed wood and copper platter

MY RETURN TO ITALY: Paintings by Anne Heywood

Tuesday Talk with Anne Heywood on her work in pastels, May 4 at 11 a.m.

A noted pastel artist with studios in East Bridgewater, Mass., and Waldoboro, Maine, Heywood is the author of the book “Pastels Made Easy,” published by Watson-Guptill in 2003. When she was 16 years old, her family moved from Newport, R.I., where she was born and raised, to Naples, Italy. “When I boarded that plane in Providence, little did I know that I would be living in Italy for the next 12 years and that those years would change my life,” she says. “Italy became my second home country. It was there that I fell in love, married and had a family. The practicalities of everyday life immersed me in the culture: I got my driver’s license, learned how to cook, made friends and memories. I dreamed in Italian.”

After she returned to live in the States, Heywood realized that going back to Italy as a tourist could only be disappointing. She happily returned for a visit in 2004, however, after her son’s company transferred him to Rome. “My Return to Italy” is a visual record of the Italy she experienced during that visit, as colored by her cherished memories. One view is of Naples at night, as seen from the high-rise apartment building where she once lived. Another is of the old portico of the building where her young son studied English. Yet another pictures an alleyway built of ancient stones. Typical of Heywood’s paintings, the compositions are striking, a bit unusual, helping us see her subject matter in a fresh, new way. “As with most of my work, these pieces use realistic elements to express personal thoughts and feelings,” Heywood says. “I hope my love of Italy shines through them.”

PLACES WITH WIND: Monotypes by Joyce Zavorskas

TUESDAY TALK with Joyce Zavorskas on April 6 at 11 a.m.

Orleans painter and printmaker Joyce Zavorskas often feels a sense of urgency surrounding her images of the seashore’s eroding cliffs and dunes. “It’s important to do this work in a timely manner, before a devastating hurricane or rising sea erases my muse,” she says. The beauty of vulnerable, ever-changing ocean edges is readily apparent in this exhibition.

Although the pristine scenes in these monotypes may not be familiar, each unique impression represents a specific site. The actual printmaking process necessarily takes place in her studio, but Zavorskas spends hours and days observing and recording nature, hiking the seashore with her easel and other painting supplies. Back in her studio, she develops the monotypes from her sketches, photos and plein-air paintings. While exploring abstract shapes and textures, she masterfully captures subtleties of weather, tides and time of day as well as the transience of the sand, shaped and reshaped by wind and waves. She’s following what she calls “a documentary impulse,” though few “documents” boast such elegance and poetry.

Zavorskas’ passion for painting remote landscapes began more than 20 years ago, while she was studying Degas’ monotypes of the French countryside at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Fogg Museum at Harvard University. Then, after seeing Monet’s series of paintings of the majestic river cliffs in the Creuse Valley of central France at the MFA in 1989, she began her own quest in earnest. The rugged cliffs of Cape Cod’s outer beaches are, perhaps, Zavorskas’ Creuse Valley. “Bearing witness to a changing world, the cliffs endure, our silent ocean sentinels,” she says. “They are also a metaphor of the human struggle to survive and endure the difficulties of life.”

In making her monotypes, Zavorskas rolls French oil-based etching inks onto a Plexiglas plate with rubber brayers, then transfers the final image to archival paper by running the plate and paper through a manual press. Artist’s Magazine once ran a six-page, illustrated article on her monotype process and, in the same issue, featured one of her works on the cover.

LIVING ON THE EDGE: Paintings by Alice Mongeau

Impressionist painter Alice Mongeau has always wanted to have a show titled “Living on the Edge.” In part, that’s surely a commentary on an artist’s precarious lifestyle. Just as surely, however, it refers to this artist’s ceaseless fasciation with places where sea meets shore in a joyful interplay of bright water and creamy sand.

Mongeau has said: “The juxtaposition of color and light in nature inspires me wherever I see it, and I see it everywhere. My eye tells me how to paint while my heart tells me what to see.” And so, with brushstrokes as free as a seaside breeze, she shows us the beauty of paint at the same time she shows us the beauty of the world, be it a splash of dazzling white clouds, a pale moon in daylight or a boulder on the flats.

Born and raised in Brockton, she attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She interrupted her early career to raise a family, but resumed painting seriously in the 1970s, when she apprenticed to John Terelak at the Gloucester Academy of Fine Arts. Mongeau, who lives in Brewster and is primarily a plein-air artist, has been painting Cape Cod for more than thirty years. She’s also painted from nature in many other areas of this country as well as in England, France, Italy and Mexico. Working outdoors on location keeps her excited about painting. “That’s where you see things you cannot make up,” she says.

Mongeau is represented by Powers Gallery in Acton, the Christina Gallery in Edgartown and Carspecken-Scott Gallery in Wilmington, Delaware. She was honored with a one-person show at the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Art in 2007. That year she also won the second-place prize in “Tree-mendous,” the Cahoon Museum’s first national juried exhibition.