Provincetown’s Big Art

Historically a hotbed for artists seeking solace, a freer lifestyle, and the benefits of intense sunlight, Provincetown continues to grow as an artistic community. Simultaneously, it is also expanding as an East Coast haven for wealthy property owners. As many know, money does not buy taste, style, or intellect. Unfortunately, in response to this fact, many gallery dealers push the mediocre, the unoriginal, and even the poorly executed upon the uninformed collector. For those who appreciate true talent, have an interest in art historical connections, and realize the importance of supporting international quality, there are a number of galleries in Provincetown worth visiting.

Artstrand, a new artist-run gallery, shows several established artists, such as Dan Renalli, Mary Alice Johnston, Tabitha Vevers, and Jim Peters. The zen-inspired photographer Dan Renalli records his own imposition of order upon the Provincetown dunes with sand designs and line and geometric constructions made from sticks, while patiently waiting for chance to take its course.

Mary Alice Johnston creates marveling, shadow-casting installations from mixed-media and conceptual box constructions — bringing to mind Calder‚s mobile installations and Joseph Cornell‚s intimate, imaginative found-object constructions. Tabitha Vevers‚ surreal-inspired oceanside nudes — each, delicately painted inside an actual sea shell — remind one of Venus soothing Mars, in the form of a hard-shelled lobster. Others show the goddess engaging with various sea creatures, projecting her charm, grace, and femininity. Although Vevers‚ Venus physically stays in her shell, she breaks out of the mind frame in which Giorgione's and Boticelli's renditions are beheld.

The oil paintings of Jim Peters express spousal love and admiration through memory-driven renditions of his wife's partially nude form, dressed in sheer stockings and translucent lingerie, while posing within a private interior. The mood is emotionally enhanced through scratches, writing, color washes, and painterly surfaces. A sheet of clear glass partially covers the surface of each painting, shielding his wife's precious nature from the viewer. Light blue hues within her skin color and brown tones accentuating parts of her face recall the look of Lucien Freud's female nudes.

Selina Trieff and Robert Henry, two painters represented by Berta Walker Gallery, share studios and a marriage of 50 years. New Yorkers and students of Hans Hofmann, both skillfully incorporate aspects of abstract expressionism into figurative compositions, while addressing complexities of the human condition. Selina Trieff's comic portraits of animals, posed against solid-colored backgrounds, emerge from drawings reflecting her intimate connection with sheep, chickens, and pigs from a nearby farm and her dog. Functioning dually as self-portraits, celebrating the emergence of joy and humor, these paintings powerfully attract us through Trieff's mindful placement of colors.
Robert Henry‚s new series of paintings, some reflecting violence, others hope, emerging from the remains of destruction, explode with bright abstract figures against black, gray and brown tones. These emotionally compelling compositions demand intense study. The horse in "Red Horse and Rider", my favorite piece in the series, profoundly expresses pain — recalling the horse‚s emotional intensity in Picasso's "Guernica" — while its rider, an ominous mass of dark brown paint, patiently awaits, like the grim reaper, for his next engagement with death.

Erden Fine Art Gallery’s compositional painter Carlos Estrada-Vega assembles sculptural paintings from square, rectangular, or circular wooden dowels, wrapped in canvas and covered with a mixture of oil, wax, paste, and pure pigment. Brought together into a final composition, these individual pieces, of varying heights, hold magnetically to a steel surface, forming a large cubed painting of various colors or hues. Estrada-Vega adds a new dimension and perspective to the grid as an art form, begging one to touch the textured cubes and move them around within the composition.

Jack Pierson, represented by Albert Merola Gallery, celebrates gay identity and lifestyle through visually esthetic, homo-erotic photographic collages. Posed nudes and images of male buttocks, viewed from varying angles or repeated within the composition, combine with colorful designs and patterns or garden greenery and flowers, suggestive of an intimate setting. Pierson's figures, like Michelangelo's Sibyls from the Sistine Ceiling, reflect his conception of the ideal human form, a sculpted, muscular male.

Edward Del Rosario, a figurative artist represented by Rice/Polak Gallery, creates psychologically compelling drawings suggestive of a dark secret, a disturbing childhood memory or an unresolvable dream. His images of children, carefully detailed, simple figures, remind one of the courage of Maurice Sendak's boy in "Where the Wild Things Are"; the vulnerability of Henry Darger's little girls; and the innocence found in Dick and Jane books.

Detail of Robert Henry’s “Red Horse and Rider” at the Berta Walker Gallery..

By juxtaposing figures against a blank background, Del Rosario enhances the feeling of a timeless space, where escape is impossible and there is nowhere to hide.
Marty Epp, represented by The Schoolhouse Galleries, creates engaging drawings, prints, and paintings rooted in obsession and memory. Appearing to reflect the marks of a trance-like state, Epp's work, composed of circular movements and flowing lines, delves into the unconscious. At the same time, some of her colored and non-linear patterns come from papers in her chine colle collection, reflecting an organized, conscious state. Epp also incorporates to-do lists and personal notes into her works — an exercise that helps bring her into the present. Her works, psychological reflections in the abstract, visually intrigue and fascinate.

Whether one is an art novice, an educated viewer or a seasoned supporter of the arts, he can enjoy viewing works by all these artists in Provincetown throughout the summer.

From the top: Selina Trieff’s
“Sheep on Yellow”
at Berta Walker Gallery;
Tabitha Vevers’s “(Shell Series) Rapture” at Artstrand and
detail of a photo
by Joanne Dugan at
Ernden Fine Art.