Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
There is nothing that brightens a rainy day like checking out a new art exhibition. Last Saturday we popped into the Hidell Brooks Gallery to view the latest exhibition featuring three of the galleries artists: Sarah Helser, Jacob Cooley and Kiki Slaughter.
Sarah Helser
Hymns of the Wild
I paint as a way to make definite the combination of both experience and the deeply personal reflections of the imagination. I approach each painting with an openness, letting it become fully changed from any initial concept. Completely understanding a narrative while I create is not important. Instead I allow the imagery to lead me, a conversation that illuminates and pulls at the hidden longings and beauty of the heart. Using layering and multiple mediums, each painting forms and reforms until it comes into its own organic completion. I myself am often surprised by its outcome.
These new works are an exploration of the emotional links between humans and the living creatures that surround us and make up our existence. Though they are so different, my hope is that the paintings hung together show how beautifully paired we are with the world around us. The combination of both realistic and abstract techniques offers something that feels both whimsical and equally grounded. This entanglement of nature and pulse combined with the layering of color, pattern and loosely sketched markings is meant to give the viewer a fresh and dreamy glimpse of something hidden in the mundane. -Sarah Helser 2019
I loved seeing all of the latest work from artist Sarah Helser, especially the pieces featuring my favorite woodland animal, the fox!
A Crown for Her Head
Invisible Threads
Left: When Violets Open Right: Unbroken Spring
Song and Shadow
Jacob Cooley
Aquatic
About a year ago, I started looking at Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series and Ed Ruscha’s photographs of pools. I was out in Los Angeles, a place I’ve painted many times in the past. I began seeing Ruscha’s and Diebenkorn’s imagery in the Californian landscape around me. The ocean, the glittering and sunlit hills. In the built landscape and the swimming pools. I began thinking about how pools effortlessly liberate us from gravity. The calming embrace of water. In Los Angeles I began seeing the compositions: aquamarine water glowing against a lavender shadow in brilliant, reflected light. A minimalist interplay of hard edges and conceptual shapes.
The resulting landscapes and pool paintings are abstractions. They are insinuations of space. Not literal landscapes; they are the essence of places – more about a sense of color or light than an actual location. About being blue as much as being water. These paintings are about minimalism and quietude, about the embrace of water and the ephemeral hum of a shifting sky. They are paintings with just enough information to embody the abstract spirit of a landscape. -Jacob Cooley 2019
For paintings that make you want to spend the warm summer days by the pool, Jacob Cooley’s work definitely puts you in the perfect summer state of mind.
Trace 2018
Kiki Slaughter
Healing
I’ve battled chronic illness for the past four years. Like the healing process, my paintings have many layers. Through color, texture and numerous coats of paint, I express the essence of practices that have helped me heal, including acupuncture, Reiki and Kundalini. These methods and tools are my muses, and I’m excited to share them with you through my art. I hope they speak to you as much as they have inspired me.
Words aren’t my medium, paint is; this collection is dedicated to healing. -Kiki Slaughter 2019
East West
The pieces by artist Kiki Slaughter end the exhibition with a combination of brilliant colors and textures leaving you feeling instantly lighter and more carefree.
Infrared
The exhibition will be on view through June 22nd.
Leave a Reply