November 2013 - Wet Paint

When you’ve had too much of the seasonal events get yourself over to see Holly Newton Swift’s exhibit at Macalester College. It’s a 2 block walk from Wet Paint and worth every step no matter what the weather.

The show includes sketches and fully executed works both in drawing and painting. Swift studies the landscape and its trees, branches, boulders, water and snow and thoroughly investigates her materials, charcoals and oils, with the same depth. Her understanding of subject and materials masterfully comes together in compositions that reinforce both. She makes the most amazing colors zing out of a palette of greys.

This is another show that confirms Macalester has built a quality space in their newly renovated Law Warschaw Gallery, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center. Swift’s paintings just sing in this gallery. It feels museum-like yet intimate with soaring ceilings that never seem to dwarf the art on display. Its greatest downfall as a college gallery is their limited hours. Check before you go. (They will be closed this Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday but open Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4. )

You can have another view of Holly Swift’s work through Kristen Lowe’s film “Painting the Place Between.” Swift along with Betsey Byers, Jil Evans and Andrew Wykes are the four featured landscape painters in the film that will debut at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Saint Paul on December 6^th.We have tickets for sale at Wet Paint for this screening.

Woodlands and Waterfalls by Holly Newton Swift is on display until December 15th

Law Warschaw Gallery

website: macalester.edu/gallery

email: gallery@macalester.edu

phone: 651-696-6416

Sometimes when I look around Wet Paint I am surprised at what products have emerged over the past decade as serious artists’ materials. I never expected to be selling aerosols. I never imagined professionals choosing paint markers over a tube of paint. And like earlier movements in contemporary art, artists’ influences today come from outside the traditional educational venues and with them come different materials. And in our quick response culture, art materials manufacturers have been able to take commercial technology and marry with fine art material attributes. So we have spray paint and paint markers that have artist palettes of colors. They have made the colors more light fast and permanent. They have altered viscosity to move the colors faster or slower.

One thing that makes paint markers and aerosols alike is that they have built in delivery systems. You no longer need a brush. While I personally find brushes to be the most beautiful of all art supplies, they are that additional step between the artist and the art. I believe this immediacy and directness is why these “new” paint mediums are so popular with painters and sculptors and printmakers and calligraphers and artists of every persuasion.