Rise and fall

“Fallen Tree and Wetland’’ (oil on canvas), by Provincetown artist Donald Beal, in the show, “Sky Power,’’ with Paul Bowen, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, June 16-July 9

The gallery says:

"Donald Beal's work breaks new ground in a gentle but inviting manner; his use of color and light are only devices designed to accent his unique sense of observation. What sets Beal's expression apart from those of his predecessors, however, is the lens from which he gazes. His perspective of nature is, in a sobering yet enlightening style, reflective of himself." 

#Berta Walker Gallery

#Donald Beal

‘Humans, flora and fauna’

“After Rousseau’s ‘The Jungle,’ by Laura Shabott, in her show “Artist and Model’’ (paintings and collage) at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, May 12-June 4.

Berta Walker noted:

“Laura Shabott makes paintings, drawings, and collages responding to the natural world – humans, flora, and fauna – with boldness, strength, and originality….And I’m continually impressed with her courage and  originality in constantly stretching through new materials and sizes, subjects.”

In 1940, a beachfront art class in Provincetown, which has been a major art-creation-and-exhibition center since the 19th Century.

Where problems seem small

Brenda Horowitz, “High View” (acrylic on canvas), by Brenda Horowitz, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass. Now 90, she’s based in New York City and North Truro, next to Provincetown.

Simplified sailing

“Allegory (San Bicola di Bari)’’ (oil on canvas), by Paul Resika (born 1928), in his show “Allegory,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., Aug. 26-Sept. 17

Provincetown patroness of art

“Mary Heaton Vorse” (maquette, mixed media), by Penelope Jencks, in the show “Mary’s Friends: An Artists Renunion,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., through Aug. 7

The gallery explains: 

“Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) was a journalist, labor organizer, war correspondent and arts patron, co-founding the Provincetown Players, and donating her old fishermen’s tackle house on Cape Cod Bay in 1915 as a home for their plays. Penelope Jencks is an internationally renowned sculptor, commissioned over the years to create numerous portraits, including those of Eleanor Roosevelt, Serge Koussevitsky, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copeland, and Seiji Ozawa.

“In her book Time and the Town Mary Heaton Vorse writes about the fascinating and very different schools of art in Provincetown in the early 20th Century — Traditionalists and Modernists She notes: ‘The profound gulf between the two schools in Provincetown is so deep that the respective members fight freely together, pound tables, and even heads...The old school shouts the loudest, but the new school flies its nose highest.”

‘Made fugitive with light’

“New Day”(oil on canvas), by Provincetown-based Cynthia Packard, in her show at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.

The gallery says:

“A Cynthia Packard painting may start from a live model, flowers from her garden or a boat lulled by the waves.  An overall textured canvas may at first sight appear purely abstract, only to reveal with further viewing, the movement of seagulls returning at dusk, or a figure emerging from the canvas. Light flows and brings alive the atmosphere around them.  The works are bold, yet innocent, edgy, and deep.  ‘The figures in her paintings routinely seem caught in the act of moving from one dimension to another, the body made fugitive with light,’ wrote poet Melanie Braverman. Art writer Deborah Carr writes that Packard’s paintings ‘explore paradox and contrast; consider moody interiors and verdant spaces. She juxtaposes graceful curves and sharp edges, dark contours and amorphous boundaries. The viewer of Cynthia Packard’s [painted] world realizes that remaining aloof from her powerful images is not an option.”’ 

But you never find it

“In Search of Lost Time,’’ by Salvatore Del Deo, in the group show “The Mysterious’’, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., through Sept. 12.

The gallery says:

“{Provincetown-based} Salvatore Del Deo is a painter engaged in a spirited dialogue with his work, responding to the deep questions presented by the paintings themselves. It is this challenge that has held Del Deo's passion through the over 50 years of his painting career and has resulted in an immense and diverse body of work. His is a style that seems to traverse the continuum from the realistic to the abstract, with a natural fluidity available only to one who is thoroughly centered. Del Deo has painted all the familiar scenes of his life at land's end – fish, dunes, figures on the back beach, boats moored at the town wharf, trap sheds and lighthouses – made new for the viewer through the painter's rich palette and soulful perspective. It is as if he is focusing long-stored energy through the lens of pure color – the color concentrated, coagulated by that intense focus.’’

Mr. Del Deo also has a beloved Provincetown restaurant called Sal’s Place.

Seek higher ground!

“Black Sea” (painting), by Peter Watts, in his joint show with Brenda Horowitz, “Truro & Wellfleet Motifs,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Aug. 21-Sept. 12

'Nothing is isolated'

“Personalia’’ (oil on wood panel), by Mike Carroll, in his show “Hidden Forces at Play,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Aug. 15-Sept. 5. The gallery says: “Carroll paints stillness and subtle shifts in space in conversation. His multi-colored and ‘colored’ black and white paintings ‘embrace imperfection, impermanence and the passing of time.’ Mike Carroll's paintings reflect his sense that ‘nothing exists by itself independently of the rest. Everything is related to everything else; nothing is isolated, a philosophy of Buddhism’’’.

See:

https://galleryschoolhouse.com/mike-carroll/

http://www.bertawalkergallery.com/

Friendly or not?

“Moon and Islands’ (oil on panel), by Lucy Clark, in the group show “A Season of First Landings,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.

But they're ambivalent about it

“Two Dancers” (oil on canvas), by Selina Trieff, in a group show called “One Couple Exhibitions’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, through July 20.

It only looks relaxing

“Leisure” (acrylic on canvas), by Carmen Cicero, in the current show “Creative Couple,’’ at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.Carmen Cicero is a painter and jazz musician. The gallery says: “Early Cicero was known as an abstract expressionist, but after a fire in his studio in the late 1970s, his work changed. He turned to Figurative Expressionist paintings and watercolors, unique, original, and personal, exuding the artist's personality and observations of human interaction through color and form.’’

'Expansion and containment'

Elspeth Halvorsen, "Mermaid and The Horseshoe Crab'' (box construction), in her show "Constructions, '' at  the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown,  July 28-Aug. 19.
 

The gallery says:

"Elspeth Halvorsen's mixed media constructions balance expansion and containment, liberty and boundaries, filling her work with found objects gathered in surrealist assemblages. The group of assemblages in this exhibition were created throughout her career, focusing on minimal and abstract space and yin/yang balance. They create the sense of miniaturist surrealistic stage sets - or even temples - wherein her repeating symbols of moon, sphere/egg, mirror/ reflecting surface, draw our attention psychologically inward.'' 

Private performance

"Elizabeth 2002'' (oil on board) by Arthur Cohen, at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.

The long view

"Column Woman'' (bronze), by Penelope Jencks, in the show "The Hans Hoffman Legacy,: Creative Diversity,'' at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., through March 11.

His fair paintings

"Pygmalion Diptych,'' by Charles W. Hawthorne, is the show "Connections: Hawthorne to {Hans} Hofmann and the Hofmann Students of Berta Walker Gallery, '' Provincetown, Mass., through Nov. 1.

Beyond Abstract Expressionism

"Ascension'' (oil on canvas), by the late Budd Hopkins, in the show "Budd Hopkins: Full Circle,'' at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, July 21-Sept. 3.

The gallery said: "When the idea of creating a traveling exhibition of Budd Hopkins' work was first proposed ... art historian, artist and writer John Perrault was invited to curate the exhibition. Before Perrault's untimely death in 2015, Perrault wrote the following: 'Budd Hopkins was embedded in his time but also removed from it. His intelligence, which is clearly revealed in his writings about art, also shines through his paintings. He was an original. (These exhibitions will) display Hopkins' considerable talents as a painter and make a case for his place beyond the category of second-generation Abstract Expressionism."'

This morning at 6

"Foggy Day'' (oil on canvas), by Joseph Diggs, in his show "Life's Layers,'' at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown,  June 30-July 22.

After the hottest August ever

"Group at Sunset'' (giclee print), by Penelope Jencks, in her group show with Peter Watts and Selina Trieff at the Berta Walker Gallery, Wellfleet, Mass., through Sept. 19.

The Cape, distilled

"Chatham II (acrylic on canvas), by Brenda Horowitz, in her show at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown. She has a place in Truro, on Cape Cod,  where, the gallery says, she works on compositions "simplified to land, water, sky sometimes a house {to} explore the inherent character of the Cape landscape, where the quality of light reflected by the ocean intensifies the color of nature. The work in the current exhibition was created in plein air in the hills, dunes and marshland of Truro.....'