{"id":67702,"date":"2007-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/looking-at-the-land-merrill-wagner-paintings\/"},"modified":"2007-01-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T00:00:00","slug":"looking-at-the-land-merrill-wagner-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2007\/01\/looking-at-the-land-merrill-wagner-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking at the Land: Merrill Wagner Paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t

\nMAIN GALLERY

\nJanuary 23\u2013 March 11, 2007

\nFine Arts Center Galleries, 溏心vlog免费B站<\/p>\n


\nKingston, RI\u2014Merrill Wagner is an internationally recognized painter. Her acclaimed large-scale abstract paintings on steel and slate and concurrent lesser-known intimately scaled oil on canvas plein-air landscapes create together an uncanny, revealing bridge into her picture making. These cross-informing painting types\u2014each variously addressing the evocative power of landscape\u2014underscore the theme for this special exhibition called LOOKING AT THE LAND.<\/p>\n


\nMerrill Wagner was born in Seattle, Washington, and had early training at Sarah Lawrence College (B.A.,1957) and then the Art Students League (1959-63), where she studied with Edwin Dickinson, the influential and renowned tonalist painter. In a recent interview Wagner recollected, \u201cHe [Dickinson] wanted us to look at things as though we\u2019d never seen them before, whether it was a figure, a still life, or a landscape.\u201d She also recalled her formative teacher\u2019s remarks on format that have arguably equally stood as a permanent challenge to her. \u201cI just think the square is always a satisfying configuration, and Dickinson said it was the hardest to compose in.\u201d (\u201cIn Conversation: Merrill Wagner with John Yau and Eve Aschheim\u201d in Phong Bui, publisher, The Brooklyn Rail, October, 2006, 18-20.)<\/p>\n


\nAs the subtitle of this exhibition suggests, a spirit of inventiveness and an embrace of the unconventional, learned early in her career, remain prominent hallmarks of Wagner\u2019s mature artistry. An American Academy of Arts & Letters Award heralded her outstanding achievement in 2006.<\/p>\n


\nThe emphasis of the 溏心vlog免费B站 exhibition lies specifically in the mutually reinforcing structures of representation and abstraction, a penetrating theme of Wagner\u2019s project, yet one never previously revealed publicly. This exhibition\u2019s subtitle, Sky Land Water\/Linen Steel Stone, intentionally juxtaposes elements of nature with their animated corollaries, the physical materials of Wagner\u2019s art. It is through these varied materials, observed and interpreted, that Wagner\u2019s distinctive artistry asserts itself.<\/p>\n


\nWagner is a long-term resident of New York City who shuttles regularly to the Pennsylvania countryside and also returns frequently to the majestic Pacific Northwest. In all of these environments, and across the seasons, she makes art informed by close looking at the quite varied characteristics and conditions of local landscape. Using rust preventive paint on square supports that are typically large, 2-part steel surfaces, or applying paint and pastel to multiple slate blackboard fragments, or painting with oil on stone oriented to be seen from above, in the upcoming exhibition we watch the artist create ever-fresh, absorbing works. Always surprisingly, Wagner conveys a sense of keenly understood natural phenomena. But she also demonstrates the unique possibilities of painting to forge its own structures for understanding the world.

\nTogether with the sampling of easel scaled oil on canvas paintings, the exhibition will provide an informative \u201clook at the land\u201d\u2014and far more. The vibrant yellow of forsythia bushes, and even the sudden intensity of fresh snow are optical encounters that become pictorial events in Wagner\u2019s small paintings. As forsythia becomes cadmium yellow and migrates onto hot rolled steel as a band of pure color, Wagner ultimately uses what she sees to paint what she wants.<\/p>\n


\nIllustrated catalogue with essay by J. Tolnick Champa accompanies the exhibition.<\/p>\n


\nMain Gallery Reception

\nSunday, January 28, 2-4 p.m.

\nJoin us!

\nMain Gallery hours

\nTuesday \u2013 Friday, 12 noon \u2013 4:00 p.m.;

\nSaturday and Sunday, 1:00 \u2013 4:00 p.m.<\/p>\n


\nThe FINE ARTS CENTER GALLERIES are open to the public without charge and are handicapped accessible.

\nThe Galleries are closed on federal and local holidays.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAIN GALLERY January 23\u2013 March 11, 2007 Fine Arts Center Galleries, 溏心vlog免费B站 Kingston, RI\u2014Merrill Wagner is an internationally recognized painter. Her acclaimed large-scale abstract paintings on steel and slate and concurrent lesser-known intimately scaled oil on canvas plein-air landscapes create together an uncanny, revealing bridge into her picture making. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}