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CORNELIA
FOSS
NEW
PAINTINGS
MAY
10
-
JUNE
9, 2007
DFN Gallery is
pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by
Cornelia Foss. Foss paints her landscapes, portraits,
nudes, and still lifes with economy and sensitivity,
producing formally striking compositions with a deep
resonance for nature and figures. With smart simplicity
she recreates the abbreviated forms of Long Island’s
East End coast, the faces of family and friends, and the
human figure producing potent canvases with conviction
and grace.
Foss lets the
simple, direct contours and lines of the coastal
landscape guide her compositions, as in her beach
paintings Gray Day and Yellow Grass, Sagg
Beach. With a lean and sophisticated palette,
Foss captures the tones of the land, water, and sky as
they shift harmoniously with the undulating light of the
day. In Flowers, a huddled composition of flora,
Foss demonstrates her ability to maintain that accord
and elegance of palette even when handling a
multiplicity of colors. Like Fairfield Porter, Alex
Katz, and Jane Freilicher - figurative painters who
happily coexisted with their New York Ab-Ex
contemporaries - Foss paints her subjects with a
flatness and formal vigor, producing deceptively simple
confident canvases. While she uses few brushstrokes to
convey forms and figures, Foss’s familiarity with her
subjects allows her to convey their sentiment with
perceptive understanding.
In reviewing
Cornelia Foss’s previous show at DFN Gallery, Michael
Kimmelman wrote:
Graceful, mature, modest paintings full of light and a
subtle geometry, Cornelia Foss's views of the beaches
and salt marshes on Long Island
and of Central Park convey a quiet awe for the beauty of
nature and for paint's mellifluous ability to embody
it. Whether it's a vista through flowering bushes and
beneath heaving branches across a summer meadow; or the
dark blue sky pressing down on a flat field, with a
turquoise pond, like a gem, sparkling in the middle
distance; or the glow of the sun against snow,
silhouetting a pine whose shadow frames and balances a
barren tree in the foreground - the mood is calm, bright
and alert.
Cornelia Foss
studied sculpture and painting in Indiana and Rome,
Italy. She has been exhibiting internationally for over
fifty years. Her work is in many distinguished public
and private collections, including the Arkansas Arts
Center, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art,
the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Foss
teaches at the Art Students League and the National
Academy of Design, and lives and works in Manhattan and
Bridgehampton, New York.
A
catalogue with an essay by John Dobkin is available
through the gallery.
A reception will be held for the
artist on
Thursday, May 10th from 6 to 8 PM
To view more images click here.
DFN Gallery is located at
210 11th Avenue on the sixth floor.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 to 6.
For further information, contact us at (212)334-3400 or
visit us at www.dfngallery.com.
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Cornelia Foss, Gray Day,
2007, oil on canvas, 52 x 52 in.
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Cornelia Foss, Flower Patch, 2006, oil on canvas,
52 x 52 in. |
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