‘Pattern Play’ Group Show Opens at Carrie Haddad Gallery

Susan Stover

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Pattern Play, a group exhibit featuring new works by Donise English, Bruce Murphy, Vincent Pomilio, Susan Stover, and Stephen Walling, is on view at Carrie Haddad Gallery from Wednesday, August 12, through October 11. This exhibit examines a range of gestural and graphic pattern variations in abstract painting and sculpture.

Opening receptions are canceled until further notice. Masks are required to visit the gallery and visitors are requested to maintain a social distance of at least 6 ft. from others.

Poughkeepsie-based artist Donise English will exhibit selections of recent encaustic and mixed media painting and drawing, along with a playful variety of sewn paper and encaustic sculpture. Inspired by architectural blueprints, maps, and textiles, English creates geometrically based abstractions that are re-interpreted with intricate layering and repetition. It seems only natural that her fascination with structural patterns would extend into the sculptural realm. Small irregularly shaped box-like wall sculptures have become more amorphic in shape and vibrant in color, assuming the name ‘Play Towers’. English teaches Studio Art at Marist College and is Coordinator of the Interior Design Program at Marist’s branch campus, Instituto Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence, Italy.

 

Stephen Walling’s three-dimensional wooden wall sculptures continue to offer a dazzling display of color, form, and shadow. As a former graphic designer and award-winning art director at Conde Nast Publications, Walling’s creativity always manages to take a simple concept into new and exciting directions. His latest work is a collection of jewel-like hand painted wood cuts: all geometric in shape and arranged in puzzle-life motifs, offering exciting new angles with every shift in perspective. Walling lives and works in Germantown, NY and has shown with the gallery since 2006.

 

Susan Stover is based in Carrie’s hometown, San Francisco, has become known for her painting and sculpture that blends the artistic sensibilities of non-Western cultures with geometric pattern and repetition. Stover’s newest work evokes her interest in textiles, specifically of her memories sewing with her grandmother and her experiences in India embroidering with women in remote villages. The artist incorporates these traditional processes by arranging small square patches of latex painted cardboard into geometric motifs and hand-sewing them with thick latex coated thread. This work evolves into a small wall sculpture series, entitled “Anamneses”, which speaks to the ritual function of textiles and how they become tangible objects handed down from generation to generation to signify scared life events. Stover shows nationwide and has been represented by the gallery for five years.

 

Vincent Pomilio, Moving On, 2019, acrylic, pigmented plaster, and wax on canvas, 20 x 33 inches

Long-time artist of the gallery Vincent Pomilio continues to marvel viewers with his bold paintings that combine a jubilant mingling of color and shape with layered pigmented plaster, acrylic, and wax on canvas or wood panel. Vibrant abstractions are created through a repeated process of applying medium, segmenting sections with tape, and then scraping into the surface. His ongoing “Big-Little” series of 12 x 12 inch panels will be on view alongside large 48 inch and 60 inch square canvases, highlighting the artist’s versatility in adapting color relationships at any scale.

 

Texas native Bruce Murphy will exhibit a new series of paintings using his preferred materials of enamel paint and various metallic powders. Over the years, we have seen Murphy’s abstract color composition take on characteristics of landscapes where horizon lines distinctly separate land from sky in minimalist blocks of color. Recently, Murphy has introduced a grid of straight, measured lines that pierce through the expansive color schemes with the implied specificity of an Agnes Martin.

Diaphanous clouds of color are layered within veils of gold and silver metallic powders. A true master of this medium, the artist’s deft application results but also emits from, through and behind the nebula of color. Murphy invents a universe on a two-dimensional plane where his marks and incisions become points in the cosmos. Murphy obtained a BFA in paintings from the Parson’s School of Design in New York City. After a long career in graphic design, he now lives in Rhinecliff, N.Y., and devotes himself full-time to his art.

 

 

 

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