Join us on Friday night for the opening reception of The Edge of Abstraction—a selection of paintings by artists Betty Anglin Smith, Carl Plansky, and Micheal Zarowsky.
You know Betty best for her bold and vibrant landscapes. More recently, however, she has been finding inspiration in abstract painting. “My joy in landscape painting for many years has been my connection with the natural environment,” she says. “Morphing into abstract painting was an easy transition in that I’m still painting organic forms that tie in with nature.
“The image is not ‘the thing’,” she explains, “but the long fluid brushwork that flows into a colorful rhythm with unrestrained freedom becomes the expression of the image. And the result is a reflection again of nature, but now it has been abstracted into its essence.”
Plansky, who died in 2009, is known for the texture, color, and energy that he brought to his paintings. An obituary published in The Examiner stated: “His surfaces look like the moon, building up to thick, craggy mountains of pigment and pockmarked with thin, perfect plains of washes. He was in love with the textures and colors of oil painting.”