Cumberland Gallery  Deconstructions New Paintings by Kit Reuther Sign and Flow New Paintings by Allison Stewart March 21 - April 18, 2009 Opening Reception for the artists Saturday March 28, 6-8 PM Beginning Saturday, March 21, Cumberland Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by local Nashville artist Kit Reuther and New Orleans painter Allison Stewart. This will be the fifth solo exhibition for Ms. Reuther at Cumberland Gallery and will mark the first solo show for Ms. Stewart with the gallery. Kit Reuther’s (TN) large scale paintings continue to build and evolve thematically in her new body of work for this exhibition. Employing a restrained color palette with small infusions of color, her abstract works weaves marks and shapes amongst several layers of paint in an effort to achieve “a balance of intention and randomness.” She does not hesitate to reveal her choices in editing by maintaining areas where marks have been rubbed out or erased and redrawn. Thoughts are registered in a deliberately random order of gestural lines and intentional forms. For Reuther, her work “continues to build on a primitive vocabulary of ideas rendered in shorthand, made up of bold strokes, meandering lines, smears and drips.” Reuther’s works are included in the collections of the TennesseeStateMuseum, Nashville, Bellsouth, Nashville and Landers and Associates, Memphis to name but a few. For Allison Stewart (LA), the elegantly historic environment of New Orleans set against the ongoing reconstruction in lieu of the catastrophic devastation resulting from hurricane Katrina provides an entry point to understanding her painting process. Her experience of living these events prompts her to explore the dynamics of natural processes, the “ebbs and tides of the river, the processes of erosion and sedimentation, the phases of the moon, the fury of storms” and to understand her place among them. In her painting process, the ideas of erosion and excavation are as fundamentally important as their counterpart of regeneration. While building layer upon layer of paint, she relies upon scraping away paint to unearth a history of marks or puddles to “coalesce into an image that is both familiar and unknowable.” Paralleling the cycle of nature, exposed and eroded elements are as vital to the visual language of her work as that of re-growth or renewal. Stewart’s paintings impart the feeling of witnessing these ideas occurring simultaneously on the same surface. At once they describe the fluidity of water, the organic, living environment as well as the historical record of that which was lost or eroded. Stewart’s work is included in the collections of Chase Manhattan Bank, NY, Ernst and Whitney, New Orleans and Morgan Keenan Inc, Memphis to list but a few. The opening reception for the artists is Saturday, March 28, 6-8PM. It is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are 10qm – 5pm Tuesday through Saturday. |  |