Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present Clearing: Recent Paintings by Isabelle Abbot and Colors For a Large Wall: Matthew Langley opening Friday, October 6 from 6 to 8pm. The exhibitions will run from October 6 to October 28, 2017.
Oil paintings by Isabelle Abbot supply answers to a “series of questions” about the landscape, the artist’s relationship to her environment, and the specificities of place. An earthy palette in painterly strokes suggests the familiar scenes and textures of Virginia’s mountains and fields. Light and soft focus capture each particular mood and atmosphere, confirming the practice of painting from direct observation through a distinct perspective. Detail and form are distilled to communicate sensations “honestly and clearly”, and to “discover what is essential about a place.” Spending her childhood in Greenwood, Virginia and currently based in Charlottesville, Abbot remains intimately connected to her surroundings through the act of painting which offers this “painter of a very specific region” a forum in which to realize her place in the world.
Abbot earned a BA from the University of Virginia in 2005 and an MFA in painting in 2011 from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Her work has been exhibited in Greensboro and across Virginia, and she has lectured at the University of Virginia and Bridgewater College. This is her third exhibition at Page Bond Gallery.
In the side gallery, Matthew Langley’s rectilinear paintings are also the product of a deliberate practice. In 2014, Langley began his “painting a day” series to “shake up [his] studio practice” and “loosen up the work.” The resulting “gestures of pure paint” reflect an enduring appreciation for structure while introducing a smaller format and a more improvisational process. Vertical streams of color remain, while their diaphanous layers are more evident as they seep outside of their irregularly drawn rectangular boundaries. Individual works are exhibited in a grid, functioning in formal relation to others. Larger color fields inspired by the series are more refined while retaining a similar “presence and feel.” Together, they convey Langley’s “visual concerns” to balance “color and process, mark making and field, scale and relationship, planning and improvisation.”
Langley holds a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art. His works have been exhibited and collected throughout the East, with recent exhibitions in New York, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Tennessee. He has also been featured in ACS Magazine, The Washington Post, and American Psychologist. A newly published monograph, A Year in Painting, chronicles his painting-a-day project.
