Debra Diamond and Roberta Gross: Recent Abstract Paintings and Drawings March 9, 2007

Opening Reception: Friday. March 9, 6 to 8:30 pm
Third Thursday Reception: March 15, 6 to 8 pm

Debra Diamond and Roberta Gross are each presenting exhibits in the Touchstone Gallery Annex of their recent abstract paintings and drawings. These artists display -- in very different ways -- their instinctive, gestural and expressionistic reactions to specific images, other civilizations and the human figure. The two emerging artists bring a freshness to abstract artwork in very distinctive approaches.

Debra Diamond integrates her bold organic, figurative shapes in large scale works. Her paintings, which convey how she feels rather than representing specific images, are energetic and ambitious. Her free hand drawings, which are lyrical and visceral, are usually on paper including some papers she has made. She activates the painting surface by what appear to be personal symbols resulting from the amorphous interaction of her lines and shapes. For Debra, “The pursuit of artistic intuition is at the heart of the work.”

Through the painting process, Roberta Gross transforms her reactions to everyday objects and people and her personalized readings of literature and myths. She works by layering and scraping the surface and shaping the composition with emphatic gestural lines. The finished paintings, while personal in meaning to her (such as when she reconstructs myths like she did in the exhibited Sibyl series), are for the viewer to interpret from an individualized point of view.

Official Website: http://gallery.infosrc.com/webmodules/articles3/anmviewer.asp?a=306&z=1