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Columbus, Ohio USA
Return to Homepage www.shortnorth.com
Columbus, Ohio USA
Art: Elizabeth Ann James, Columnist
July 2006
www.lizjamesartscene.blogspot.com
LIZ JAMES ART COLUMNS
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Kathryn Gallery
Connect with art that speaks to you© Photos courtesy of Kathryn Gallery
Michael John Hill's England's Rosy Old Dawn Luscious art at Kathryn Gallery
Kathryn Gallery is located at 642 N. High St. in the attractive upscale gallery space where Thomas R. Riley Galleries (formerly the Riley Hawk Galleries) used to be. The art at this gallery is great to look at and to live with. It’s marvelous art. Kathryn Flynn, co-owner and curator, displays each month’s featured artists in the front window. In July, paintings by Rosa Canto and Michael John Hill will be featured, and their paintings will likely be in the window.
Michael John Hill is known as a surrealist landscape artist, and Rosa Canto creates bright pastoral scenes. In general, the artists at Kathryn Gallery are young, imaginative power painters with European backgrounds and training. Their work is, on the whole, neither as risk-taking nor as edgy as some of their U.S. counterparts, but it is fabulous.When dawn is silvery
Michael John Hill was born in England in 1956, and his England's Rosy Old Dawn will grace the cover of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine in July during the same time that his painting is exhibited at Kathryn Gallery.
England's Rosy Old Dawn is a varnished, luminous, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches unframed. (Actually, Hill uses a combination of oil and acrylics.) The large painting reveals a cross section of English countryside. In this landscape everything is balanced without seeming so: three stark leafless trees, a brook or stream flowing upward, a wire fence with posts, lushly foliaged trees on each side, and a blurry field. The eye travels upward. This is the kind of painting you want to walk into. It is sometimes described as “meditational.”
Yes, the dawn is silvery, full of mist, or the suggestion of sun and mist, and yes, it is faintly gold and pink – roseate. Michael John Hill is a genius at creating atmosphere, an expert at undertones, and he suggests that his paintings be hung at eye level so that the atmosphere, or light, changes with the time of day!
Hill’s rosy old dawn is not bright, the way climbing roses are bright; yet, the title may be a tribute to the “jolly,” as in a “jolly old English countryside,” which Hill grew up in and loves so much. The artist, basically self-taught, lives and works in his hometown of Brighton, England. Art critics aptly compare his paintings of trees, brooks, and fields to those of the old masters.
Collectors of Michael John Hill’s art work include the following: The British Royal Family in England, The Sultan of Brunei, The Miyoshi Corporation, Buz Aldrin, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Fishburne.
The Amsterdam Fine Arts Web site is apt in stating that “Hill blends the elements of air, water and earth to recapture the early morning mist and sunlight known to England.”
Rosa Canto's Landscape Rosa Canto: Canto means song
Rosa Canto paints complex, sun washed, peaceful scenes. And one of them should appear in Kathryn Gallery’s window during July. One of her pleasing “Landscape” series, an oil on canvas 41 by 48 inches, is varnished yet appears more textural than does Hill’s Rosy Old Dawn and is less subdued in color. The work was likely painted in rural Italy or Spain, but not in Central Ohio where terraced fields are not prevalent!
The artist draws our eye upward through delicate strata so that the autumn-like foliage, the wild flowers – gold, white, red, and orange at the bottom – pulls us back into the painting. Canto demonstrates skill in drawing our attention with sparse use of red. Beyond are gentle fields and pastures enriched by the use of olive greens, a few trees and low hills rich with blue shadows, and one low slung barn. The eye wanders past more pale fields that blend into purple mountains and a windswept sky. A Canto landscape “sings” a gentle but vibrant symphony that emits an indefinable Spanish sound.
Rosa Canto was born in 1968 in Alcoy, Alicante, Spain where she began her studies at the Fine Arts School. Later she continued her education in Valencia at the San Carlos Fine Arts University. Since 1998 she has been awarded and selected for over 15 national competitions and awards, and her work appears in many esteemed collections. She is a Spanish painter with a professed love for the terrain and traditions of her homeland.
Shortly Before The Party, by Sandra Batoni A Lovely Party
Sandra Batoni was born in Italy in 1953 and was intrigued by art at an early age. By the time she was 20, she had begun to study and to assist at the studio of artist Emanuele Cavalli, one of the founders of Scuola Romana, The Roman School. Today she is a professor at The Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, and she is a marvelous figurative painter in oils. (In the meantime she also earned an architectural degree.)
Batoni is a very Now artist, and her realistically painted women possess an edgy no-nonsense chic. Yet they are vulnerable, feminine. In Shortly Before The Party, a smooth oil on canvas, 31 x 38 inches framed, two young women sit with their elbows resting on a dressing table where everything is classic and neutral. The gleaming vanity top is uncluttered except for two cosmetic jars, a lipstick, and a mirror stand. The painting itself is smooth and creamy.
One young woman is wrapped in a bath towel. She has short hair. Her sister or friend is already wearing a soft red party dress; she has a long braid. Neither of these two women are wearing makeup, at least obviously, and they look straight at us. The one in a bath towel is gazing over her shoulder. There’s not a dust mote or a wrinkle in this absolutely marvelous painting which is so “cool,” yet so touching and familiar.
Serious collectors will appreciate Kathryn Gallery. Concurrently, many ordinary people will buy high quality art there for display in their gorgeous new homes. The exhibiting artists at the gallery possess technique and imagination. Their aesthetic ranges from an Old Masters affect to innovation to the marvelously decorative.Art Stuff
If you missed Sharon Weiss Gallery’s June show by plein air oil painter Debra Joyce Dawson you missed a real treat. But Dawson’s charming blossoms and rural scenes will remain available at the gallery in months to come. The Sharon Weiss Gallery, located at 20 E. Lincoln St., is open Thursday through Sunday.
Log on to www.lizjamesartscene.com for news of Northwood Gallery. In August, artist Diane Efsic, the mother of a U.S. serviceman, plans to exhibit around 2,600 Joss papers, each one inscribed with the name of a U.S. service person who died as a direct result of the current Iraq War. When I asked Diane whether she would commemorate the Iraqi casualties, she replied sadly “I couldn’t possibly make that many. One on either side is too many.”
Note: Ron Anderson of CCAD and Martin Luther King Arts Complex fits the description of Columbus, Ohio’s, own power painter. As to subjects, this guy travels from German Village to ballets to night clubs and Slave Ship themes (the Cargo/Middle Passage triptych ) with the technical aplomb of George Bellows and Emerson Burkhart combined (well, almost), and he recently concluded “Moments,” a strong show at the Ohio State University Faculty Club.© 2006 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.
