Art review: The art of nature

Since the time of en plein air painting and before, nature has inspired artists. Representations of our natural surroundings range from the realistic to the abstract and from the positive to the pessimistic.
Three artists currently on view at Perlow-Stevens Gallery draw direct inspiration from this source but in ways that leave the viewer feeling nostalgic, somber and energized.
At first glance, Patty Oblack’s paintings seem one-dimensional, just as one might see a Mark Rothko color-field painting and wonder, “What’s the big deal?” But look closer. Just as when you approach a Rothko or even a Jackson Pollock drip painting, there are countless layers behind what might seem simple at first glance. Oblack applies the acrylic paint to panels with a pallet knife and draws one color through another. During this process, undeniable texture and depth are achieved. In At Peace With the River, this depth takes on the appearance and feel of water ripples.

Patty Oblack, who lives in St. Louis, said the energy captured in her work is reliant upon music. She sometimes does a series of paintings entirely while listening to one artist; for the series Middle-Earth she listened to New Age musician David Arkenstone. Knowing the influence music has on her painting, Oblack seems to subconsciously include sound waves in her works. The horizontal space where the top and bottom colors blend together on the panel takes on the subtle form of the spikes and dips of the music hitting her ears.
Cat Tesla, an artist from Snellville, Ga., is less abstract at painting from her inspiration. Like Oblack, she is intrigued by texture and color as well as the juxtaposition of shapes. The subjects of her paintings are organic, either originating from Mother Nature or inspired by her. The landscapes in her works come from memories or serenity she experiences in nature.

The borders of her paintings drift off into hazy, drippy paint marks. They give you the sense that you’re seeing your own memory with equal haziness and lack of clarity. The focus is on the center of the painting, where the forms are more clearly defined. Her works are wonderful studies of viewing, sensing and remembering. Our minds conjure up memories based on feelings we have of the past; Tesla said she strives to communicate what can only be felt rather than seen.
Equally inspired by nature, Derrick Breidenthal’s works are more abstract than Tesla’s. He practices direct painting, or alla prima. Each stroke is applied to his painting with the intention of letting it remain as part of the final statement. Ideally, he said, no bit of retouching is needed when the last bit of surface is covered.
Breidenthal said his work begins with a natural experience that leaves an impression on him, whether that is an uncomfortable silence in the woods, an unusual color or a brief observation. He studies the beauty of rural land as well as the contrasting destruction and withdraw of rural life. The overwhelming colors of his oil paintings give you a sense of standing in the midst of nature. In Coast, the sandy yellow foreground meets you and takes you right into the scene with the sky enveloping everything around you. The painting Overgrowth, a completely green surface with a glowing center, gives you the sense of being covered and consumed with vegetation.
Although these three artists are all inspired by nature, each approaches that topic in his or her own way and shows viewers a different insight and perspective to the world around them.

PS Gallery Spring Exhibit

Perlow-Stevens Gallery’s spring exhibit includes artists from across Missouri and two southeastern states. Here are brief descriptions of the exhibited work from Joel Sager, the gallery’s curator and permanent artist:

Susan Bostwick, St. Louis

Bostwick’s striking ceramic sculptures are among the first work one notices when stepping through the gallery door. They stand between three and five feet tall and have an earthy, seemingly ragtag presence. On closer inspection, the viewer finds that each is a totem narrative incorporating a mixture of imagery via low-relief sculpture on slab-rolled clay, three-dimensional form and found objects. Quaint, rural themes abound and make Bostwick’s work easy to digest and the perfect aperitif to the exhibit.

Cat Tesla, Snellville, Ga.

Tesla’s paintings occupy the wall behind Bostwick’s work to good effect and depict loosely rendered land and waterscapes as settings for the latter. The strength of Tesla’s work lies in the artist’s use of the uncontrolled: drips, scrapes and rogue brushwork. Boggy atmosphere is achieved through vignettes, which give the viewer a sense of constrictive space within the canvas’s plane.

Michael Bauermeister, Augusta, Mo.

Bauermeister’s sculptures are exhibited, quite appropriately, in the middle of the gallery. His dramatic, nonfunctional wooden vessels divide the space as the perfect interlude to the mannerist work annexing the front half of the gallery. The artist explores texture on wood varietals and has the most methodical process, from a technical standpoint, of all the exhibiting artists.

Patty Oblack, St. Louis

Oblack’s paintings could be posited somewhere between that of color field abstraction and its more painterly sibling, action expressionism. With distance, each of Oblack’s paintings seems to be a study of hue, absent of form. However, fervid knife-work results in surface interest that draws in the viewer for a more intimate encounter. At this point, one finds that contours are scratched in, and the palette is quite limited and controlled.

Derrick Breidenthal, Kansas City

Breidenthal’s oil paintings hang in the farthest point back of the main gallery space. This isolation is purposeful and crucial in appreciating Breidenthal’s nuanced sense of painting, which explores saturated, vivid hues and seems to teeter between subdued imagery and complete abstraction.

Elaine Fleck; Roanoke, Va.

Fleck’s mixed-media paintings are found just opposite Tesla’s work in the front of the gallery. Using collaged bits of fabric as under-painting and then rendering representational imagery over this, the artist depicts dreams and other inspirations with intense hues and a naïve aesthetic. Figures, masks and nature all relate to one another and the viewer with a quirky sense of narrative.
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