New Visions: Paintings by Heather Kanazawa at Glass Growers Gallery An Art Review
Sometimes the work is so “abstract” that it’s truly hard to know what the artist is attempting—or cynic that I am—is the artist trying to “pull one over” on the viewer?
That’s not the case with Heather Kanazawa’s art, which is currently exhibited at Glass Growers Gallery in Erie.
Displaying a dozen oil-on-canvas creations, Kanazawa’s paintings are quite often discernible, apparent images that match their titles. Her brightly-colored canvases invite the viewer to experience what she was painting, which appeared to be several examples of plein air imagery.
Take for example “Seaview.” An almost evenly divided canvas showing a gloomy grey sky, a bluish body of water and a dark palette of reds, umbers and brown tonalities that symbolizes the land that abuts the sea.
“Scottish Highlands” (see above) portrays looming mountains underneath a bluish-white sky. And beneath the impressive, brooding summits? A lush valley of vegetation recreated in varying shades of reds, yellows, pinks and splashes of green that head toward a tiny body of water near the canvas’ bottom.
“Blue Mountain Landscape” provides the viewer with several shades of blues that symbolize the faroff mountains. Above it, streaks of yellow vertical paint seem to express the sun rising from behind the ridges, while a golden field speckled with green and brown tonalities at the canvas bottom welcomes the viewers to a vision of nature’s glory.
According to the artist’s statement that’s on the gallery’s website:
“My paintings are studies of memory and place. My work mainly is abstraction, because I feel that most memories are simply recordings of colors, textures, or sounds. Idevelop them, adding and subtracting paint, scraping, taking away, and playing with color and texture. It is through this process that the work begins to developand feel fully realized. I work intuitively in each work and let the act of painting guide me through each step. It is through this process that I am able to convey a sense of depth in my work and truly feel that it is resolved. My goal in each work is for the painting to take on it’s own voice and, in essence, to become another place other than the initial trace of memory.”
A worthwhile show by a worthwhile artist to see before it closes soon.
