Ice Floes by Kim Thorpe. Photo credits: Kim Thorpe..
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 3 from 6pm to 9pm
.
Gallery B presents patterns, dreams, shapes…a vibrant conversation, featuring artwork by Geoff Desobry, Greta Chapin McGill, Scott Sedar and Kim Thorpe.
The four artists met for the first time in August and shared their respective visions, insights and process. They found many instances where their creative lives had crossed and were able to speak to each other in the mythological and spiritual context of art. The meetings continued and the conversation embraced the patterns, shapes, textures and colors of their work. They shared experiences, motivations, theories and goals. A sense of humanity and healing emerged. Four palettes, four voices connected in the universal rhythm of life and art.
Geoff Desobry has been creating art for more than 40 years. His work is predominantly non-objective dry pastel characterized by a rich luminosity. There is a reverential quality to his art that he attributes to his admiration for Paleolithic cave paintings. Early on he attended the Corcoran School of Art and journeyed to Paris, Florence, and New York. He includes Eduard Manet, Mark Rothko and Leon Berkowitz among the artists who have influenced him. “”My art is a walk through dream space and spirit consciousness. I attempt to paint what can’t be seen; the emotion and presence that binds us together.”
Greta Chapin McGill studied painting and art history at Howard University and The Corcoran School of Fine Art. She spent time living in Florence, Italy. Exhibitions of her work have been shown in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New Mexico. Her international influences produce an artist finding color, music and sensuality in everything. “Art is tied to religious, cultural and spiritual iconography. Whether it be the huge bold canvases of Jackson Pollock or the amazing beauty of the Sistine Chapel. It tells the internal struggle of the artist to express that which fights to emerge. I believe in the internal struggle. The need to expel the images permeating my soul. I feel my art must examine my time and era of travel on this earth, my sense of my inherited DNA. I am influenced by the color, music and spirit of my ancestors. My art is diasporic expressionism”
Scott Sedar works mainly in oil on linen, painting figures, floral studies and the landscapes of Washington, DC, where he lives. He is mostly self-taught and credits his childhood struggle with polio as the initial source for his artistic life. An opportunity at Denver’s Gaslight Theatre in 1971 offered him his first solo painting exhibit, as well as an opportunity to explore set design and stage work as an actor. His local theatre contacts have provided space for painting exhibits at Metro Stage and Gala Tivoli Theatre. He served as House Guest/Artist-in-Residence at Baltimore’s Evergreen House and Museum, and participated in an Evergreen-hosted Maryland Institute College of Art three-artist show “Perception & Ability.” “I create my artwork to draw closer to my subject’s story, to marks out that special something that ‘moves’ me. Sometimes, I’m brushing up right against or right inside the image, while at other times, it’s like I must enter through an obscuring atmosphere in order to discover and appreciate my subject. In these most recent paintings, I have intentionally painted elements of that obscuring atmosphere, exploring realism through the edge of abstract expressionism. Layered patterns serve as a graphic lens to connect the subject, viewer and artist.”
Kim Thorpe received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art from St. Mary’s College of Maryland her Master of Fine Arts in painting and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. Originally from Bethesda, MD she exhibits her work locally and nationally. Kim is currently a studio renter at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD. “I paint through improvisation, chance and discovery. Inspired by landscape imagery and abstraction, my paintings explore ways in which color, shape and line coalesce to convey an environment that can be seen as both an expression of reality and an abstract picture.”
Gallery hours:
- Wednesday & Thursday: 12-6:00pm
- Friday: 12-8:30pm
- Saturday: 12-6:00pm
- Sunday: 11am-3pm
Gallery B is located at 7700 Wisconsin Ave. #E, Bethesda, MD. For more information visit www.bethesda.org.
