Recent Work by Marsha Goldberg, Larry McKim and Wes Sherman
Exhibition duration: September 30 – October 20, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, September 30 @ 6:30-10:30pm
Curator and event coordinator: Jewel Lim
Live Jazz Music: New World Order
The Alfa Art Gallery is proud to present “PAINTING / PRESENCE” a group exhibition by Marsha Goldberg, Larry McKim and Wes Sherman – the best artists in “New Brunswick Art Salon 2010” and winners of awards provided by New Brunswick City Market. Chosen from a broad range of talented participants in the “New Brunswick Art Salon 2010,” Goldberg, Larry and Sherman were selected for their contribution of new perspectives to the New Brunswick community as a means of art education, with their different approaches to painting the non-representational.
Judy Wukitsch about the exhibition
Wes Sherman, Marsha Goldberg, and Larry McKim are three artists who share the broad genre of abstraction in their paintings. However, their approaches are different when putting brush to canvas, as are their personal goals and visions. While seemingly lighthearted, the paint-marks that jump across the canvas, or the color and shapes that seem haphazardly placed along the surface, in actuality often result from great diligence and painstaking deliberation.
Judy Wukitsch
Independent Arts Consultant
Founder/former Director, Pierro Gallery of South Orange
Marsha Goldberg about the exhibition
I begin these paintings with a gestural mark contained within ruled lines. The mark is then reiterated—and sometimes obscured—by tracing it or painting the negative space around it. This slow and measured method of presenting the initially spontaneous gesture is a meditation on the art-making process.
In its resemblance to text, the imagery may appear to be almost decipherable. This is comparable to what one may experience when traveling—attempting to interpret a written language that is unknown, but ultimately only able to understand it as a picture or decorative line.
Larry McKim about the exhibition
The imagery in my work is abstract, however is not inspired only by geometric shapes. I also imply the human form, animal and plant shapes. Different pieces suggest humor, chaos, peacefulness and playfulness. The titles are given when the pieces are complete and suggest my own personal associations. Once the pieces are formally resolved, they exist apart from me and I view them as anyone else would. My goal is to have the pieces have complexity, mystery and intelligence that keep me interested and engaged over time.
My work includes painting and several printmaking techniques. I find that silkscreen, reduction woodblock and monoprinting all relate to painting in some way and help me advance my visual vocabulary. The series of small collages are called “Amalgam” to reflect the fact that they have elements of many image making techniques within them.
Wes Sherman about the exhibition
I paint about painting and the nature of painting. It is neither a grand or uncommon act. Painting is one of the earliest acts of human beings; we paint to define our lives and to put our existence into context with nature.
The act of painting is a search for meaning within nature’s sublime. This probing for self-meaning is at the heart of the sublime and the history of painting. The painter is constantly trying to reason a way into nature, while the philosopher is trying to reason a way out of nature. Painters who get their hands messy with the mud of paint and interact with the history of painting, will by the natural act of painting, look for the spiritual purity, grandeur or excellence that is hidden in nature’s sublime.
