Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 2 from 5-7 pm

Placing Color is an exhibition that explores painting as both a place of action and destination. The exhibition presents paintings by three artists: Brett Baker, Kayla Mohammadi, and Carrie Patterson. Seen together, the artists’ intensely individual approaches create places that are both intimate and immense, unified by sensitivity to the means of painting in ways of touch and color.

Painting, the simple means of placing color on a flat surface, is extraordinary in its ability to transport us from the context of our daily existence to new places - complete, vibrant worlds within the boundaries of a two-dimensional frame. Placing Color seeks to reposition the works by the participating artists beyond an interpretation of painting as a site of illusion. The exhibition extends the notion of the painted surface itself as a location or a destination that is defined by the artist’s actions upon it.

A catalogue is available with essay by Vittorio Colaizzi. There will also be a gallery talk May 14, 2009 at 5:00 pm. Art Historian Vittorio Colaizzi will speak on Robert Ryman in relation to contemporary abstraction. For more information on the artists please visit www.placingcolor.com

Since the late 1990s, Douglas Witmer’s paintings demonstrate an increasingly distilled sensibility related to surface and color. Intuitively combining simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of the surface, his paintings are inquiries into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling, and memory. In a recently published interview with the Tokyo-based artist Brent Hallard, Witmer said, "I want the present moment of seeing to be charged with the possibility of some kind of change in the next present moment of seeing. I hope for that to activate the sense that you feel yourself seeing. I like to think of these moments as clear, pure, innocent, and solitary. And if you can get to them, then you have, in a way, started an experiential engine for yourself, and your thoughts can begin to move in uniquely personal directions."

The exhibition title "Field + Stream" is taken from the popular hunting and fishing magazine, which the artist often saw as a young boy. This title acknowledges the influence of nature in Witmer’s paintings, and refers to the binary elements in his work: rectangles of dominant color set upon a cascading gray ground. For more information visit www.douglaswitmer.com

We hope to see you there!