Morpheus ascending
Show of dream-inspired artworks by Ilka List & Lynne Friedman at High Falls’ be Gallery
by Paul Smart, ulsterpublishing.com
Barbara Esmark’s quiet be Gallery in High Falls is always full of elegant surprises, but few as sweetly redolent as the new “Drawing on Dreams” two-person exhibition of surreal bronze and terra cotta dream scenes by Ilka List and lyrical new pen-and-ink drawings by longtime Kingston artist Lynne Friedman, inspired by a recent residency at an Irish artists’ retreat. Together, the new works serve as a starting point for a deep exploration of the various landscapes of mind, spirit and tangible world that we inhabit.
“Dreams are portraits of the self painted in the nonverbal depths of the unconscious,” says List of her latest. “They are the deepest reflections of our energy patterns and our hidden needs and thoughts. If we study them, we find they tell us about our lives and suggest our significant individual destinies. We can each discover our own true direction from their intimate secrets.” The result is a list of characters, known and new, ranging from turtles, wolves and dogs to one Blind Beth Chip: a personal iconography lent added weight and stolidity by the artist’s current media.
Friedman, meanwhile, found that her recent sojourn at the Guthrie Center in County Monahan allowed her to shift from a usually colorful palette to “find inspiration in the indomitable cycles of the natural world. The impulse that transforms experience and idea into visual form is the acknowledgment of transience and the possibility of renewal.” The two artists’ works, seen together, lift each other like a classic pas de deux, playing off the exhilaration of new discoveries and the inner journeys that we all need and take these quieter months of the year.
The new show opens Sunday afternoon, December 7 from 1 to 3 p.m. and stays up into mid-January. Be Gallery is located at 11 Mohonk Road, just beyond the High Falls hamlet center. For further information visit www.begallery.com or call (845) 687-0660.
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