(HUDSON, N.Y.) – There will be an opening reception for new exhibitions of paintings by Craig Olson, Snider, Gregory Amenoff, Peter McCaffrey and Jason Stopa and sculpture by Jon Isherwood at John Davis Gallery on Saturday, June 22, 2013, from 6 to 8pm. The works will be on display through July 14.

Craig Olson’s new paintings, Angels and Demons at Play, will be in the front galleries. “These works stand as an evocation of the image as a threshold leading to new dimensions of understanding,” says Olson.

Jon Isherwood’s exhibition in the sculpture garden consists of three hand-carved sculptures in granite and marble.  Standing at eight feet tall, the sculptures are among Isherwood’s largest works to date, and represent the latest development of his ongoing investigation of form and pattern.

The rest of the artists’ work will be displayed in the galleries of the Carriage House. Jenny Snider’s Montage of Attractions: Encore, reflects her love of the movies, learned first from her mother, but also springing from historical coincidence: “cinema was born with my grandparents; and the lives of the Russian Constructivists mirror, on a tragic and grand scale, the more prosaic story of my family in America.  In foreign films, I hear echoes of voices from my childhood.”  Montage of Attractions, is a quote from the great Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein, who used it several times to define and redefine his goals – as a stage designer and director – and then as a filmmaker.

In the summer of 2012, Gregory Amenof spent six weeks in Paris living in a small apartment and running a special program for Columbia University. He decided that it might be a good time to work on paper to develop some new images to investigate later when he returned home.  He rather arbitrarily chose to work in colored pencils on a hard surfaced paper, thinking that a change in medium would engender a fresh approach to imagery and surface.  Upon his arrival, and quite fortuitously, he discovered that the Musée d’Orsay was featuring a large exhibition of their extensive collection of Symbolism, an art movement and period in history to which he had always been attracted.  The d’Orsay is rich in Symbolist painting from Puvis to Moreau to the “prince of dreams,” Odilon Redon. His secret title for this group of drawings and paintings is Fin de Siècle.

In the recent collection of paintings and drawings by Peter McCaffrey, the animal form is a physical ground for exploring an abstract space. The skeleton, horn or hoof is the armature for the body and soul of a living creature.

Jason Stopa’s multi-media paintings hover between representational and abstract approaches. He use a variety of mediums to create surface tension between a mysterious image and the physical sensation of materials. He is after a sense of play, formal innovation and the essence of a thing.  When he feels he has captured those elements, he feels the work is complete.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday, 11-5.