september exhibitions for david kroll and selena beaudry are up and looking fabulous! recent oil paintings by david kroll are in the front gallery ranging in all sizes. layer upon layer of oil paint create david’s realist still life landscapes. birds, fruit, bees and egrets abound within the compositions so elegantly laid out. david kroll’s paintings are exquisite in nature. they hark back to old masters in the most contemporary vein.
selena beaudry’s new collages and large scale drawings fill the 2nd and 3rd galleries. an installation of wallpaper entitled walking through water based on selena’s drawings in collaboration with barrie benson is the focal point of the show. viewing the wallpaper, the large scale drawings and the collages together give the viewer a study of selena’s practice. all of her mediums relate back to each other and inform one another.
david kroll received his bfa from the san francisco art institute and a mfa from the art institute of chicago. he taught at the school of the art institute of chicago for almost 20 years. david kroll paints personal refuges and interior landscapes - places to visit for solace and sanctuary. much of his work is intuitive. his paintings are more than visually interesting compositions of creatures, objects and environments. they are imagined, invented moments that touch upon man's complicated, perplexing relationship with nature. each painting reveals more paradoxes than resolutions inviting the viewer to contemplate how disconnected we are from nature. david kroll creates an emotional and intellectual connection between the viewer and the power of landscape, the independent web of life, the idea of nature itself. his work is held in numerous private and public collections.
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“i paint personal refuges in the form of still lives and imagined landscapes - places to visit for solace, meditation and sanctuary. i work intuitively to create a connection between the viewer and the power of place, the web of life, the idea of nature itself. my approach to still life allows me to work with a number of themes that have long interested me, and draw me in again and again. thematically i am interested in the interaction between man – and manmade objects – and nature. in a painted still life these ideas collapse on each other - and raise many questions. which is more beautiful – a rural landscape or a chinese vase? which is more alive, which is more still? is the rendering of an egret or a mountainside on porcelain more or less profound than treatment of the same subject on canvas? is a nest a bowl? is a vase a broken egg? and isn’t all of nature anthropomorphized in the sense that, inescapably, man sees nature through man’s eyes?
i repeatedly place songbirds, koi, and reptiles in my compositions – delicate and fragile, yet purposeful and assured. a bird rests on a rookwood vase. koi swim powerfully in mid-air, above a blue and white ceramic bowl. an egret hesitates before striking a stoneware fish. do these animals care as much as we do about the difference between human objects and the natural world? and what does any of this have to say about what nature is, or the beauty of nature itself?
compositionally the still life allows me to explore contrast – the contrast between foreground and background, between light and dark, between circle and square, between motion and stillness. it also allows me to work liberally with color – the color of natural elements contrasted with manufactured objects.
for these reasons and more i have found the still life form, often incorporating landscape elements, to be a tremendously rich means of expressing my sense of the beautiful and for exploring contemporary topics and concerns that perplex, compel and fascinate me. ”
selena beaudry lives and works in london and received her mfa from tyler school of art in philadelphia, pennsylvania. her work consist of PILES™, cut out collages and oil paintings. the focus of her paintings is color through loose gestural brushstrokes. her PILES™ and cut out collages are intricate, delicate and precise as they weave across the paper.
“this show is a tribute to my drawing practice. drawings give me time to think, explore material and find new ideas. all of the collages, the wall paper and the large drawings began with small drawings. they are then cut up or used as inspiration for the larger works on paper and the wallpaper.
the collages are created through a process of destroying and fixing; remaking until the push/pull creates something that is enticing — challenging me and the viewer. the work questions ideas of beauty, indulgence, and waste. the wallpaper is a new layer. a new way to see the marks, slashes and lyrical lines, my visual language.
all of the work is inspired by walks through london streets and parks. it is where i find time to think and reflect. i find inspiration from a walk to the studio, getting caught in the rain and seeing a rainbow. the frenetic energy of a city: car horn, a snippet of a conversation. ”
all available work by each artist can be viewed on our website under their individual tabs including sizing + pricing. hidell brooks gallery is by appointment. please call the gallery if you have any further questions.