Tuesday, May 15 – Saturday, June 9 | Opening Reception: Saturday, May 19, 5-8 p.m. Artist Talk: Saturday, June 2, 3 p.m.
Carole Garland – Streaming Color
Carole Garland painted in watercolor en plein air as a form of meditation and escape –a distraction from the stress of 21st century living and a job in sales. She drove to the local Santa Monica Mountains, Malibu Creek, Solstice and Topanga Canyons to find solace.
Sitting on the ground with an Arches full-sheet watercolor paper taped to a 24”x32” board held in her lap, Gar- land looked out on a stony streambed, a creek tracing a path over the rocks. Against a cloudless gray sky, willows drape over the water, their branches glancing the water’s surface. And Isabey brush to paper, so she began.
Nature is the springboard to Garland’s imagination, but her interpretation of it begins and ends with the medium of watercolor. Her nontraditional, abstracted landscapes take their cue from the watercolors: their brightness, their transparency, and their inherent desire to slide in odd directions, out of control. She is its servant, surren- dering to the direction and will of the medium. Garland explores mark making, color and form in these chromat- ic and vivid watercolors, at the same time reminding us to take solace in our natural surroundings.
Isabelle Hope Grahm – My Color Garden
Artist Isabelle Grahm’s debut exhibition at TAG Gallery speaks from an almost ethereal or aerial view depicting civilizations from a great distance; not only from above in the sky but in the minds eye of God. The exhibition en- titled MY COLOR GARDEN shows human beings simultaneously through a macrocosm as well as a microcosm.
The energetic patterning of living forms are seen through color, relationships shown are very close, yet apart. Each individual space utterly influenced by the space next to it remains its own entity amidst the whole. The work, all though comprised of a multiplicity of separate parts, those autonomous pieces when seen properly (in this manner) cannot be denied as one organism itself.
Grahm states:“While it appears (and feels) as if we are living our own separate existence, our true condition is more like a solitary communal one. If mankind does not become extinct, some secret doctrine extolling this ancient paradox may be revealed as THE ONE hidden amongst the many.”
On a practical level these paintings provide a lens showing people, culture, city life patterns, forming and shap- ing autonomous compartments, businesses and social juxtapositions. The stark inherent lack of differences between“inner and outer” are demonstrated here palpably as Grahm’s primary influence. Looking closely one can catch a glimpse that the seer and the seen cannot be two.
Tom Wheeler – Painted Light in Western Landscapes
Tom Wheeler’s newest work is a continuation of years of long-exposure light-painting experimentation to pro- duce striking photographic imagery in vast western landscapes. Simply put, Wheeler’s work is crafted to marry his personal sense of aesthetic beauty with elements of abstract expressionism and minimalism while exploring man’s correlation to nature. In this photographic survey, Wheeler does not advocate or condemn any particular relationship human kind has to nature, but acts as a mere observer showing his appreciation for the synergistic dichotomy between the two.
Painted Light in Western Landscapes was created and conceived at the time of exposure, with no image being digitally altered or processed in digital post-production software. Each photograph is a hand-painted, long-exposure image using light-tools such as flashlights and other objects that illuminate his subjects and landscapes, the two often blurring into one entity.
Wheeler has implemented light-painting techniques since 1989, venturing on a journey to seek new levels of experimentation with light tools to keep his portfolio of work and ideas innovative. Subsequently, a recurring theme in Wheeler’s work is vast, open landscapes with minimalist components. Painted Light in Western Land- scapes It’s a representation the powerful majesty of the natural world and man’s attempt to thrive in its grasp. Both have to work together to thrive.
