“Paramita II,” 18 in. by 54 in., acrylic on wood. By Liz Hawkes deNiord at CX Silver Gallery.
Get in on the new exhibition and opening reception for Liz Hawkes deNiord’s paintings and clay works at Brattleboro’s CX Silver Gallery, which is publishing a gorgeous book on these groundbreaking pieces. The reception and book launch are Friday, Sept 29, from 5:30 to 7:30p, and the exhibition is open daily by appointment.
Of deNiord’s work, painter Michele Burgess, the director of Brighton Press, writes that the artist “creates renderings of the human interior and the felt spirits in the natural world. She thinks, feels, reads, and observes deeply and documents her findings through her passionate and physical work in the mediums of clay and paint. These paintings are created like relief sculptures, malleable surfaces seemingly free from the boundaries of the rectangle, and often, simultaneously, containing one or more bounded shapes.”
“Return as Ticket,” 48 in. by 48 in., acrylic and gold leaf on canvas.
DeNiord’s pictures, Burgess says, “become energy fields—cradling, swallowing, buffeting, or synchronizing with smaller, hard-edged forms, guided by her intuition. DeNiord’s geometric figures coexist in this charged and ambiguous space or some are caught in a state of solitude and contemplation, free to be occupied as they wish. Her personalized abstraction gives them a timeless, universal quality.”
Burgess continues, “This is echoed in her artistic process—alone in time, serving the craft, and challenging it in her own way. Working with knives, brushes and, often, her own bare hands, she is intimately involved through every step of the journey, with very little pre-planning. She collaborates with her materials, tools, and concepts, fully engaged in the application of color—directing the hue, transparency, and degree of darkness to her specifications.”
“Layer by layer,” Burgess says, deNiord “adds and subtracts, combining the material acts of carving and scumbling with the more ethereal gestures and filmy applications of her brush. This dance allows her to express the mercurial ranges of human emotion, free of the confines of the physical body, with tenderness and ferocity. Her paintings offer the viewer both freedom to roam and places to rest. A single painting may go through numerous iterations, sometimes over months or years, before she is satisfied. Once an image is finished, she often creates variations using the same elements or different combinations of colors, textures, and shapes within her expansive vocabulary.”
Liz Hawkes deNiord at work.
The artist does this for herself, Burgess notes, “primarily with her own very high standards of craft and expression, seeking to touch our most inexplicable thoughts and feelings. For deNiord, the painting process is not about the object: it is about poetic exploration.”
The book also includes poetry from Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord and pieces by Burgess, Brian Cohen, Bill Kelley, and New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alice Fogel.
For CX Silver Gallery’s recent publications, visit http://www.magcloud.com/user/cxsilvergallery.
