This past Friday the latest exhibition featuring new work by gallery artists Susan McAlister and Kate Long Stevenson opened at the Hidell Brooks Gallery. Both artists were raised in The South, Susan McAlister grew up in Hunt County, Virginia and studied alongside other Hidell Brooks Gallery artists, Herb Jackson and Eric Aho. Kate Long Stevenson is a native North Carolinian and studied at The University of the South. The exhibition runs now through September 28th.
Susan McAlister
“Echo”
Susan Mcalister received her BA from Davidson College and has been painting for over 30 years. Her lush, often abstracted landscapes are evocative and powerful explorations of her quest for places and things that nurture and inspire. Susan applies multiple layers of paint, wax, marble dust and graphite combined to simultaneously construct and deconstruct.
Ode to the Appalachian Forests
River
What I love the most about McAlister’s work is her color palate and the abstract nature of work. Throughout the artists exhibition titled, “Echo” the artist uses shades of greens, blues, yellows, lavender and neutrals. The color palate is calming in and of itself, which is always a plus when you’re looking for a work of art that you will be looking at for years to come. As with many of the abstract pieces we’ve viewed both in the past and in the current exhibition there are two ways that we like to look at McAlister’s work, up close to see all the brush strokes, layers of paint and color, and from further back to take in the whole painting.
Understory (via Hidell Brooks)
September & the River
My favorite pieces of McAlister’s from the current exhibition were Echo, and from Edge to Edge. See more of the work from the current exhibition on the Hidell Brooks website here.
Kate Long Stevenson
“Hardly and Either/Or”
Expressionist painter Kate Long Stevenson was born and raised in North Carolina, and began her professional career while a student at the University of the South. Gestural brushstrokes and a passion for color are characteristic to all of her pieces, ranging from figurative paintings to abstracts. A life-long lover of music, Kate relies on mostly classical compositions to guide her as she builds a painting, layering chords of color over energetic swirls of charcoal and paint.
Seated Two via Hidell Brooks
Three Figures, Plum
It’s important to me that my paintings have a subject, despite how non-subjective some can seem. With my nude paintings, the figure is the vehicle that invites you to discover the true subject: the elements–the way it was painted. The abstracts have just skipped that introduction, altogether, but they’re still about something–music, tempo, motion and emotion. It all comes from a feeling, but then the challenge is not only to translate that to the canvas, but to have it make sense, compositionally. – Kate Long Stevenson
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