Light is the main element in my paintings. I use layers of oil paint and resin, usually over linen, to create deeply luminous paintings of light and the way it falls on land and water. I want my work to breathe and to convey the beauty of our world, though I don’t paint an untouched landscape. I paint a world that includes the impact we have on our lands.

In the west our world is increasingly altered by wildfire smoke and I work to capture that: the strange filter that a blanket of smoke casts on the land that changes the way we see color, bonfires near dry trees, strangely vivid suns and moons, and smoke pouring off a distant forest. Fire moves fast. It’s changing the west in late summer and I’m painting those impacts.

My work is increasingly abstracted. I find I have less to say about specific places, and more to convey about the embrace of light on landscapes, whether I’m looking down at a reflection on a river or at a wide horizon line. I rarely paint onsite; I want distance from the experience so that I can engage my memory and my mind. My images often start with a photo, then are abstracted through rough sketches, then drawings, and finally, the painting.

Okanagan: Fire on the Horizon, 2020, Oil on Linen Panel, 26” x 42”

“Lhaq’te’mish: Morning Fog” on the Nooksack Delta, 2020,
Oil on Linen over Wood Panel, 30” x 20”

“Yakama: Autumn on the River”, Oil on Linen over Aluminum, 20” x 24”

LISA MCSHANE
March 6, 2020 – March 29, 2020
Smith and Vallee Art Gallery
Edison, WA

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS

METRO FLOATING FRAME

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Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ deep paintings
Wood & Finish: ash various finishes
Purchasing Option: cut to size with wedges

Connally works most clearly with what we recognize as gestural abstraction, associated with Abstract Expressionism. Connally has focused, however, on a notable subset of such gestural painting, one recognized in the heyday of Action Painting and even cited then to link Abstract Expressionism with vital precedents (e.g. the late Impressionism of Monet, the early abstractions of Kandinsky). Like such precedents, Connally distinguishes herself as, in essence, a landscape painter, albeit one who paints the landscape she feels as much as she paints the one she sees. Indeed, Connally’s stress on sensuous form and color experience through reference to natural phenomena (in particular vegetation and water, normally in motion) places itself squarely in a tradition particular to the American experience. John Marin’s expansive rhapsodies on the local landscape exemplify this tradition, as does Joan Mitchell’s gradual – but ultimately thorough – adoption of landscape qualities and references. This sort of “plein air abstraction” defines Connally’s work, but her particular touch and palette, and her close and vibrant sense of atmosphere, distinguishes it.

Peter Frank, LA Art Critic

Connie Connally, Tigers on the River Bank, 2019, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Connie Connally Windflower II 2019 30×30 oil on canvas

Connie Connally, Rose Garden, oil on canvas,30 x 30 inches

About the artist

Connie Connally paints stunning canvases of complex elegance, with imagery that merges harmoniously and nearly completely both representational reference and powerful abstraction. Connally’s poetic colorscapes, with their expressive brushwork, sweeping gestural marks and animated cadence, reflect the artist’s passion for distilling the essence of her observations of nature and situate her work as the vital interplay between memory and imagination. Her palette of organic color and calligraphic brushstroke combine to serve as imprint of the artist’s profound love of being in nature and the desire that her painting reflect both her exterior and interior experience of it.

Citing Joan Mitchell as an important influence on her work, Connally employs exuberant, impassioned colors laid on her canvases in a pictorial strategy that teeters between the action painting of her abstract expressionist forebears and a more refined personal style that modulates the strokes and dabs that comprise her surfaces. Her layers of brushstroke read less as agitated ruptures and more like intuitive, sensual experiences rendered as prismatic atmospheres of color and tone. Rich, multi-layered surfaces of color morph, coalesce and scatter in quietly energetic rhythms that evoke the experience of being surrounded by nature.

Connie Connally

Wild By Nature

January 11, 2020 – February 15, 2020

George Billis Gallery

Los Angeles, CA

Framing Specifications

METRO FLOATING FRAME

Deep Floating Profile: 121
Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ deep painting
Wood & Finish: unfinished maple
Purchasing Option: joined frame
Framing Advice: Fitting Floating Frames

Vaughn has focused his energies as an artist working in landscapes for over thirty years. Vaughn approaches his work with a quiet contemplativeness that reflects the serene aspects of the natural world and reveals the underlying spiritual nature that can be found in the environments he portrays.

Crabapple Blossoms, 2019, oil on canvas, 30″x30”

Last Light, 2018, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40″x40″

Sunlit Water Lily
2019, Oil and acrylic on canvas 40″x40″

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jeffrey Vaughn, from Alton, Illinois, received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1978 from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and his Master of Arts degree in 1981, and Master of Fine Arts degree in 1983 from the University of Dallas.

His paintings have been published in New American Paintings, Fine Art Connoisseur, American Art Collector and reviewed in the American Arts Quarterly and the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

His work can be found in numerous public and private collections such as the U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC; Anheuser-Busch Inc., St. Louis, MO; Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Louisville, KY; and Kentucky Public Radio, Louisville, KY.

  Jeffrey Vaughn
April 30, 2019 – May 25, 2019
George Billis Gallery
New York, NY

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS

New Blossoms, 2018, oil and acrylic on canvas, 40″x60″

METRO FLOATING FRAME

Profile: 121
Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ canvas paintings
Wood and Finish: unfinished maple wood frame
Purchasing Option: unjoined frame cut to size with wedges

Kesler Woodward, the widely recognized Alaska artist from Fairbanks, will be featured in a solo exhibition at the blue.hollomon gallery. Woodward is best known for his paintings of birch trees and the northern landscape.
This new body of work provides his birch tree “portraits” and his personal view of the Alaska landscape in a range of seasons.  In his exhibit catalog last October in Montreal he says, “I made completely abstract, non-representational paintings for years before my images evolved into landscapes.”  Woodward also says, “I want my paintings to be very realistic – all about the beauty, wonder, and magic of the thing I’ve painted. But, up close, I want them to be entirely about, color, texture, surface, gesture – all about the paint.”

Woodward has had numerous solo exhibitions spanning his more than 35 years of work in Alaska.  He has shown his paintings and has been included in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, and the Morris Museum in Augusta, Georgia among others.  His paintings are also included in numerous public, corporate and private collections throughout the United States.

In addition to his active career as an artist, Kesler Woodward has worked in Alaska, first as the Curator of Visual Arts at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, next as the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage and finally as Professor of Art at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks from 1981 until his retirement in 2000, when he returned to painting on a full-time basis.  He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Woodward has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to the arts by the Alaska State Council on the Arts, the Rasmuson Foundation and the Western States Arts Federation.  He is also recognized for his accomplishments as an art historian and curator.  He organized three major exhibitions for the Anchorage Museum and wrote four major books on Alaska art for the museum, including Painting in the North, a catalog of the Museum’s permanent collection, and major publications on Alaska artists Sydney Laurence, Eustace Zeigler and Fred Machetanz.

Georgia Blue, co-owner of blue.hollomon gallery with Gina Hollomon, has worked with Woodward since the late 70’s.  She says, “Kes is simply the total package.  He brings a richness, vitality, intelligence to painting that celebrates the Northern landscape plus his support of other artists is unwavering.  He is a treasure!”

“Harbinger”	“Deep Enough for Ivorybills”
“Promise”	“Water From the Rock”

“Kes Woodward: New Work”
July 3 – July 26, 2014
Blue.Hollomon Gallery
Anchorage, Alaska

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO FLOATING FRAME

Deep Floating Profile: 121
Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ deep canvas paintings
Wood & Finish: ash wood frame with pickled white finish and black interior
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting floating frames

“Just wanted to say thanks again for the great job on those last two large frames. Top notch product and team that you guys have. They both were installed today and the clients were very pleased!”
Steve Gamler
StudioMule
www.studiomule.com

We would like to return the compliment to Steve and say, “Bravo!”  The amount of expertise involved in joining, finishing, and installing the painting is impressive.

Paul Harryn
THE ODYSSEY, 2014
Ink and acrylic paint on stretched canvas (5)
5 ft. H x 20 ft. W
152.54 cm H x 609.6 cm W

Metropolitan works with some of the best exhibition crews in the country and this required a lot of expertise not only on our part but our customers. Our lumber suppliers supply us 10′ boards. It is much more difficult to get boards over 12′ and not possible over 20′. And, of course, the boards  need to be very straight. Therefore, this frame needed to be done in sections. We first custom milled the frame to have a wider face and base and deeper depth than our standard floater frame. We made this in 3 sections and the customer joined the sections with wood biscuits that we supplied. Crossbars were made to add stability to the frame. The frame was then routed out with our wedge system. Working with professionals is always fun. We took some pictures so you could get an idea how projects like this are done.
The work was installed 6/21/14 at Kutztown University’s Schaeffer auditorium. Click to see a video of the painting and the actual installation.

Metropolitan routed out the wood and supplied the biscuits for the three part frame.

Metropolitan routed out the ends of the frames and supplied the wedges so the customer could join the frame.

Metropolitan drilled holes and provided screws for crossbars.

Metropolitan did a dry fit of all of the pieces before sending to customer for assembly.

“The objects I choose are ordinary, out of use, out-dated remnants of our culture. I like to think of them as archaeological finds. Their oddness is meant to create a sense of confusion or question. A person finding a never-before-seen object on an archaeological dig might feel that same sensation. Each object is presented straight on, forcing the viewer to consider it alone. Isolated in the painting, the objects have no other reference but themselves. And yet they can conjure up references beyond their own experience. They invite flights of fantasy, stories designed by the individual viewer. These stories are the biographies that I try to elicit from the viewer, hoping they gain a new insight about what an object is, or how it can been seen.”

She’s Going Places, 2012 oil on canvas 38 x 44

“Ready to roll”, 2012 oil on canvas 28 x 48

I’m Off…To My Future!, 2012 oil on canvas 14 x 22


Get ’em Guys, 2012 oil on canvas 11-1/2 x 27

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Michael Beck has led a very interesting life. He he was born in 1943, spent some time in the Bay area in 1960’s living with the Beatniks in North Beach and the Hippies in the Haight. He received an MFA in painting with high distinction from California College of Arts and Crafts in the 1984. He is currently represented by the  Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica and Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco. To learn more about Beck’s life read this fascinating interview in  Works & Conversations which is an online magazine of interviews with a wide range of artists.

Michael Beck “Notes to Self”
New Paintings
June 16 – July 28, 2012
Lora Schlesinger Gallery
Santa Monica, California

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO FLOATING FRAME

Deep Floating Frame: 121
Type: floating frame for 1-1/2″ deep canvas paintings
Wood and Finish: ash wood frame with black lacquer finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame