Current Exhibition at the Carrie Haddad Gallery

Exhibits

June/July showing
June 21st through July 29th 2001
Fecundity of Summer
Two Solo Shows and a small Group Show

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To view more of Leigh Palmer's work click here or visit the The Artists Page for seeing works of additional artists if available.

Leigh Palmer
Reginald Madison
Kirill Doron
Juan Garcia-Nunez
Ann Artschwager
Ann Chwatsky

showing at the Carrie Haddad Gallery
June 21st through July 29th 2001.

A reception is scheduled for Saturday,
June 23rd from 6-8 pm and all are welcome to attend.

....Palmer brings new landscapes inspired by the vistas of the Hudson Valley area. The works are encaustic; a medium he has been mastering for the past six years using melted beeswax and pigment.

Until recently, Leigh Palmer had spent most of his painting life working in oils. He depicted serene interiors, views through windows, and landscapes in a precise, detailed style, sometimes using photographs. Then, in 1987, he moved with his family from suburban Duxbury, Massachusetts, to Tivoli, New York, a quiet town on the Hudson River.

His paintings darkened, often capturing the late afternoon light or the moments just before dusk, and he began to try new forms and materials.

His subject matter shifted to the sprawling hills and countryside of the Hudson Valley. "I wanted to respond to
the new landscape I was seeing, to catch something of the feeling it had just before dark," says Palmer."
I took a lot of photographs, but I was happier with the paintings I created from memory."

Palmer's work has become loose and spontaneous working with the encaustics.
"Instead of a preconceived idea," says Palmer, "I allowed my emotions to come into play and let the image
evolve during the process."

Palmer is in impressive control of all his technical skills, from the smallest mark and smudge that compose
each space. The resulting romanticized rural visions are reminiscent of Breughel and his compositions of
organized geometry.
Paraphrasing reviewer Jeanette Fintz, 'there is mystery in his canvases that holds promise of stories
unfolding in earth's crevices and hillocks, grassy fields and behind the hedgerows.
The rising glow of light at each horizon and sight line reinforces a glimmer of expectation.

....Heralded in the New York Times as chief among the discoveries of 1992's Contemporary Black Artists
In America exhibition in Great Neck, NY, are the passionate canvases of Reginald Madison.

Madison's work is bold and direct using bright, almost garish color and agitated form to highlight the
emotional intensity of his subjects. His theatrical, expressionistic style emphasizes each persona of
the well-defined characters.

Born in the south side of Chicago in 1941, Madison received no formal art education, though he had
developed an interest in art in his early teens. He was greatly influenced by the collections of the Museum
of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. At 21, he began working as a crane operator at
United States Steel.
Some of his earliest paintings were done in the booth of his crane, nearly 60 feet above the warehouses and
docks of Lake Michigan. After six years at the steel mills, Madison left Chicago and traveled for a year-and-a
-half around Europe, working and painting in Paris, Venice, and Copenhagen.
After returning from Europe, he lived for a while in Chicago and Connecticut, then took a studio in
New York City for a few years, and eventually settled in the Berkshires.

Madison's early work has ties to the Chicago School in that some of his first paintings were linear and
hard-edged, but he soon developed a more fluid, painterly style of his own, with roots in abstracty expressionism.

Drawing heavily on autobiographical themes, Madison's recent works reveals his love for jazz, African
tradition, and family memories.
These are works that do not succumb to a superficial aesthetic resolution.The raw human experience
translates into a rawness of color and is represented with an aggressive, sometimes even crude,
handling of paint.

....A small group show in the back gallery space includes the photographs of Ann Artschwager,
pristine landscapes by Kirill Doron, and contemporary abstract paintings by Juan Garcia-Nunez.

In the Upstairs Photography gallery Ann Chwatsky exhibits Interior Landscapes, a show of digital Iris prints
from the series When I was a Girl. These images evoke the remembrances of feelings the artist had when
growing up, when life was still a mystery. The work bridges the traditional landscape with psychological
and personal issues.

Ms.Chwatsky is known as a photographer and an educator. She currently teaches at NYU where she is
Coordinator of the Photography Programs at the Department of Art and Art Professions of the School of Education.
Ann Chwatsky currently co-leads the Photography as Art/China program at NYU.

The Carrie Haddad Gallery is located at:
622 Warren Street in Hudson, NY.12534

Please call (518) 828-1915 for directions, more information or
visit our Contact Page for detailed Maps.

New summer hours, find the gallery open everyday from 11-5