Watercolorists exhibition opens

Watercolor painting, Mid-Southern Watercolorists’ 43rd Annual Juried Exhibition
Richard Stephens
Brunch at the Arlington

Watercolor painting, Mid-Southern Watercolorists’ 43rd Annual Juried Exhibition Richard Stephens Brunch at the Arlington

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Recycling is the title of a picture hanging near the entrance to the Butler Center Main Gallery, where the 2013 Mid-Southern Watercolorists 43rd annual Juried Exhibition resides through Oct. 26.

The technical brilliance of the image is an early indicator of the overall quality and professionalism of the show, which consists of 50 works selected by Jean K. Gill.

Inspired by a trip to China, Margaret Harrell’s painting depicts a woman cycling past weathered, makeshift walls of bright blue. She is wearing a white dust mask because of air pollution, and carries a bulky load of broken-down cardboard boxes on the back of her vehicle.

The painting is a gouache, a relative of watercolor that is easier to control, and the artist expertly exploits the precision of the medium.

The artist organizes Recycling around a framework of graphic elements. Rows of apartment windows peek from behind walls adorned with orderly Chinese characters, and a horizontal rectangle of roadway runs across the foreground. The cyclist, her vehicle’s round wheels and the uneven layers of cardboard she is hauling stand out from the straight-edged structure of the backdrop.

Rows of small, neat brush strokes separate the work from photo-realism.

Eye of the Tiger is Judi Coffey’s watercolor-gouache hybrid, and it couldn’t be more different. The artist has delicately delineated the image from a base of loosely painted oranges and blues. The colors are rich and, presumably, a tiger lurks somewhere in and around this riot of shapes and colors. This painting won the Gold Award, the show’s top prize.

There are a handful of other abstractions in the show and Selma F. Blackburn’s The Shapes of Sounds and Sandra Marson’s Gold Dust are particularly noteworthy, as is John James’ aptly titled There’s a Lot Going On.

In Brunch at the Arlington, Richard Stephens depicts a piano player with all the ease and immediacy of a Thelonious Monk jazz solo. A pianist is seen here, playing in silhouette with a window behind that bathes his piano in light and shadow. The work clearly demonstrates the technique of wet-on-wet watercolor, a loose, free-flowing medium in which the artist applies paint to a wet surface and allows the color to spread.

A more detailed approach is used in Break Time at Brick Street by L.S. Eldridge. In this watercolor, a young woman sits with legs crossed outside a trendy boutique in Rogers, pecking at the keypad of her cellphone with a coffee cup on the bench beside her.

She’s surrounded by busy store windows and their attendant reflected light, so there’s plenty to look at here as reflections from the street merge with items on display in the store to form a multicolored array of shapes and forms that play off the neutral gray walls of the building and sidewalk.

Marlene Gremillion’s elegant Eastern Light is a large watercolor, and the painter’s mastery of light and shadow is evident across the green stem and the pink petals of the flower. The oversize image has the kind of forceful presence associated with painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

Susan Gibson also uses the floral motif to great effect in her painting One Surprise. Sheila Parsons-Talley’s contribution to the exhibition is the delightfully loose St. Marks Square, which captures the excitement of Venice in an assortment of wellplaced brush strokes, while Diane Ziemski’s painting of a little girl, called Lady Bug, is a charming addition to the show.

On a side wall hangs a small work by Bryan Kellar titled Garden Gate. Slightly in shadow, it’s a diminutive piece depicting an overgrown gateway. It’s a subtle study in quiet perfection.

Nineteen paintings have been chosen to tour Arkansas, according to the catalog.

The gallery is part of the Arkansas Studies Institute, which houses other galleries. There is a lot more to see, including Get a Simple Landscape: Drawings by Jerry Phillips, which is in the Mezzanine Gallery through Sept. 28.

2013 Mid-Southern Watercolorists

43rd annual Juried Exhibition

Through Oct. 26

9 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-

Saturday

Butler Center Main Gallery

Arkansas Studies Institute

401 President Clinton

Ave., Little Rock

(501) 320-5792

Style, Pages 49 on 09/08/2013