Then and There

William Sillin, William Bond Walker, Judith Lamb and in the Upstairs Gallery: altered photos by Dini Lamot, and in the backroom: Russell DeYoung's small paintings

Landscapes and Still Lifes

February 19, 2009 through March 29, 2009

Artist Reception Saturday, February 21st,  6-8pm

There and Then, Landscape and Still Life Paintings

 Photos by Dini Lamot and small works by Russell DeYoung

The Carrie Haddad Gallery of Hudson, New York announces an exhibition of landscape paintings by William Sillin to take place February 19 through March 29, 2009. The gallery will host a public reception Saturday, February 21, from 6 to 8pm.

Sillin's realist paintings are inspired by his love for and background in the natural sciences. His mural sized natural history paintings are on permanent display at the Amherst College Museum of Natural History, Amherst, MA and at Dinosaur State Park, Rocky Hill, CT. His illustrations have been published in several scientific texts and journals.

The Carrie Haddad Gallery exhibit will feature Sillin's tightly focused and textured paintings of marine, river, mountain and desert subjects. Sillin paints small pictures

directly from the subject and larger, more detailed canvases using his photographs and sketches. Sillin, 53, is a Hudson Valley native and is currently residing in Sunderland, MA. He graduated from Wesleyan University and earned his MS degree from The University of Massachusettes School of Wildlife and Forestry Conservation. He studied art at The Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, and both Ithaca College and Cornell University.

In addition to Mr. Sillin’s work, the exhibit includes paintings by two other gallery artists; William Bond Walker and Judith Lamb.

Lamb shows us simple fruits and vegetable in commonplace settings, yet imbues them with a sense of mystery and foreboding verging on the gothic.

Part of the power of these small  paintings comes from their dark backgrounds, which create strong tonal contrasts with the organic and inanimate objects that Lamb places on tabletops or dangles from strings or simply suspends in space. The black background also creates an atmospheric void, suggesting the psychic draft in a tale by Edgar Allan Poe.

Art critic Claude LeSuer writes, “Lamb is a meticulous realist who paints in smoothing, translucent oil glazes that lend her shapely squashes and peppers an almost erotic glow. These svelte vegetables suggest more than a few anthropomorphic possibilities, yet Lamb has the admirable restraint never to push the visual metaphors too far. Her paintings never skirt tastelessness, yet the viewer is left with a host of human associations, some quite sinister.”

Judith Lamb lives in Hamden, NY.  She received her BA in Art from Brooklyn College and her MFA from Columbia University.  

 William Bond Walker will be exhibiting a variety of  paintings which will include both representational landscapes and abstractions, two Mr. Walker feels quite comfortable with. His abstractions are developed intuitively.  Images sometimes emerge, and when appropriate are kept in the development of the painting, and finally may dominate the painting. Walker is interested in the power of color and the interaction of color and “design” as components in the evolution of a painting, whether abstract or representational.  

In all formats the medium of choice is usually acrylic on paper or board, occasionally combined with ink or crayon.  Less frequently he works in casein on paper or board, or rarely, acrylic on canvas.  Acrylic compels (or allows) one to work rapidly, but offers flexibility in application of the paint:  impasto or thin, opaque or transparent glazes.  Blotting the wet surface with textured paper or distressing the wet top layer of paint allows the color underneath to show through, enlivening the surface of the work.   The medium’s speed in drying allows over painting and reworking within a short time.

William Bond Walker’s  influences  in painting range from Cezanne to Matisse to Dienbenkorn and he is also inspired by the work of Bonnard, Beckmann, Marin, and Marini. Every painting is a new beginning.

Walker’s paintings are in 48 private collections in 13 states, California to Massachusetts and in two corporate collections:  ABC-TV and  Heller Ehrman, Washington DC.

Walker held position of library director at the following art museums:  Brooklyn Museum 1959-1964; National Collection of Fine Arts and National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution 1964-1980; Metropolitan Museum of Art 1980-1994.   He is now retired and lives on Queechy Lake in Columbia County.

Showing concurrently in the Upstairs Gallery space performer/photographer Dini Lamot exhibits a series of inkjet prints entitled “Photoshop 101”. The  extremely ironic and weirdly sincere world  that Lamot has created pay homage to Hollywood’s greatest female icons.  See Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Ann Maragaret as you have never seen them before.

I the backroom of the gallery there is a small exhibit of paintings by Russell DeYoung.

"Through the alchemical process of painting, these modestly scaled paintings evoke the energy at work behind the landscape’s sublime veneer. Viewed as devotional objects to the nature lying at one’s own feet, the paintings divest themselves of the grand vista and the conventional appearance of things in order to participate in the ongoing power of transformation omnipresent in the world. The essence of weather, the reciprocal relationship of life predicated on death, the changing seasons, and the wildness present in an urban backyard are all elicited in these simple but terse works. Through an uneasy pairing of the comic with the sublime, the paintings simultaneously reflect on the acknowledgment of the presence of wonder, and our inability to acquiesce to its calling in our daily lives." -Russell DeYoung

Russell DeYoung makes paintings that often straddle conventional notions of representation and abstraction. His work has been included in numerous regional and national exhibitions, most recently The 50th Annual National Exhibition of American Art at the Chautauqua Institute in Chautauqua, New York. Mr. DeYoung has been painting professionally for over twenty years.

The Carrie Haddad Gallery, voted "Best Gallery of Contemporary Art in the Hudson Valley" by Hudson Valley Magazine, is located at 622 Warren Street, Hudson, NY and

is open daily (closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays) from 11am to 5pm.  You can call the gallery for directions or more information at (518) 82801915 or check the website at www.carriehaddadgallery.com