(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Modern Artists, a new exhibition featuring contemporary painting and photography, both figurative and abstract, from a small group of gallery artists – including Donise English, Jenny Kemp, Newbold Bohemia, Katheryn Holt, Tracy Helgeson, Giselle Potter, and Patty Neal — opens at Carrie Haddad Gallery on Thursday, January 23, 2014, and runs through March 2. A reception for the artists takes place on Saturday, January 25, from 6 to 8 pm. 

Donise English and Jenny Kemp both create abstract, non-objective art using mixed media that is characterized by a bold combination of color, shape, and line. English, who is a Professor of Studio Art and Art History at Marist College, uses encaustic and collaged works on paper and panel to reflect on conception and materialization. Her layered constructs are inspired by maps, architectural drawings, blueprints, or patterns and structures found in roller coasters, power lines, and fences. Her flare of primary colors used with pastels bring to mind a 1950s retro aesthetic. Kemp also contemplates the deconstruction of our everyday act of perceiving but with a more intimate subject; the human body. Her unique, geometric forms, made using gouache on paper, are the result of her meditation on the body and our relationship to organic matter. Kemp lives and works in Troy, N.Y. and recently received her MFA in Painting at SUNY Albany in 2012.

Everything seen in Newbold Bohemia’s photography is fake, but it’s all so true. Bohemia is an Albany-based photographer who openly stages characters and props to evoke narratives that go far beyond what is visually represented. He meticulously builds sets in which to shoot his models who are impeccably dressed in 1950s attire. In post production Bohemia replaces every bit of color with a chosen palette of pale pinks, greens and blues. The “false” fantasies of falling in love with body builders, being a heartless mother or plotting the demise of one’s husband feeds the stereotype that surrounds this era.  Bohemia gives his subjects a voice to fight the complacency of gender roles assigned to American society in the 1950s. Over the past three years, Bohemia has exhibited in more than a dozen shows, primarily in upstate New York.  This is his first exhibit with Carrie Haddad Gallery.

The figurative works of artist Katheryn Holt depict women of a similar nature and era. Holt was raised in Hollywood by her father, a screenwriter, and her mother, a 1950s housewife. Holt’s work emanates the influences of cinematic narratives and media based reality. The women illustrated in her paintings reflect the likeness of iconic leading ladies of the 1940s throughout the 1970s. Holt says “The costumes worn by these production beauty queens inform my work in series and uniform patterns. Because my maternal grandmother was a seamstress to the stars, the world of vintage, cinematic costuming holds a special significance in clothing my painted starlets and positioning them center stage in their  pop memoryscapes. Through the use of transparent glaze and gestural sweeps of graphic linoleum colors, the women are framed and a light is cast upon them, illuminating their form and revealing their function, which is to share their inner life and history with you, their audience. Holt attended the Slade School’s Master Painting Class in London and also shows her work extensively in California.

Artist Tracy Helgeson also paints portraits of women from another era in the ongoing series People You Know, which are based on photographs found at yard sales, antiques shops, estate auctions, and eBay. Helgeson finds a personal connection to these photographs in elemental features such as the backdrop, a particular pattern, or pose rather than the individual themselves. She uses a bright, colorful palette; her signature pinks and purples pay homage to these anonymous photographs that were once treasured for their sentimental value. The exhibit also includes several of her landscape paintings, which she is perhaps better known for during the 15 years she has been showing at Carrie Haddad Gallery. Helgeson majored in Graphic Design from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1983 and also received a degree in illustration from the Philadelphia College of Art.  She lives with her husband in Fly Creek, N.Y.

Giselle Potter, a new addition to the gallery, presents an array of small illustrations from the recently published book by Gertrude Stein, To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. Her surreal, folk-art inspired style compliments Stein’s whimsical collection of prose and fantasies that transport the viewer through the alphabet like never before. Each letter is accompanied by a short story, which is brought to life by Potter’s magical portrayals. Her drawings are frequently shown at the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles, the Katonah Museum, and have been selected for several of the American Illustration annuals. Potter, who was born into a family of painters, currently lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and two daughters.

Patty Neal has been showing with Haddad for several years and continues to fascinate with small views of Brooklyn and Manhattan. This collection of cityscapes brings a new element into Neal’s work, with empty spaces of blank sky or concrete walls dominating the canvas.  By combining elements of city and landscape, Neal plays with reality and explores the concept of visual, mental, and emotional boundaries we create in life. She often times will work on two separate panels depicting two separate locations and then bolt them together to create a single diptych.  Through her multi-paneled work she invites the viewer to break boundaries and consider the possibility of a connected whole. Neal attended Parson’s School of Design and currently lives between Columbia County and Brooklyn, N.Y.