Moments of Solitude | Jen Greely and Lisa Hesselgrave

Artwork by Jen Greely and Lisa Hesselgrave.  On display November 18, 2018 to January 7, 2019.  For further information please contact Jen at jzgreely@gmail.com or visit www.jengreely.com.  For Lisa, please inquire at lisa@lisahesselgrave.com or visit www.lisahesselgrave.com.

CURATOR STATEMENT

Most of us thrive in the light, but sometimes we long for moments of solitude and darker, quieter spaces where we can allow our deepest thoughts and buried emotions to flourish; spaces where we can lose ourselves in profound introspection. For some, these moments are found on a stretch of beach where only the waves and the edge of time are encountered; for others, a softly moonlit road or a forlorn wooden structure shrouded in mystery and possibility.

These evocative works by Lisa Hess Hesselgrave and Jen Greely are connected by the common thread of mood, drawing the viewer in as they prompt an emotional response. The color palettes they work in connect as well, both choosing subtle, darker hues for the greater part of the piece, brightened occasionally by swaths of more vibrant colors. On subject matter their path's diverge; Hesselgrave's work prompts the viewer to see a place lost in time, while Greely's shapes and abstract lines propose a place left alone by time.

Curators: Amara Johnson and Shekaiba Bennett

ARTIST STATEMENTS

Jen Greely  I explore moments of unexpected or hidden emotion in everyday objects and scenes and express these moments through gestural line drawings, painting, printmaking, and site-specific installation. My current series of hand-drawn knots is based on discovered rope washed up on beaches or casually tossed aside on docks. I document these found lines through photographs, and then transform them into simplified line drawings, printing plates, and silkscreens. I explore concepts of time and place: these free-form shapes preexisted my drawings, the intertwined rope having recorded the past movement of unseen elements, tides, or people.

Lisa Hesselgrave  The focus of my work shifts between several themes: the atmospheric landscape/the figure as an abstraction of form and color/the narrative that occurs when the painted figure enters the painted place. After years of painting the landscape, and painting and drawing the figure in interiors, this body of work merges the two. Mostly wooded and often dark, the places my figures inhabit are conjured from memory and imagination. Reflecting on the Germanic fairy tales of my childhood and mixing it with a dose of my current life in a semi-wooded area of Connecticut, I’ve re-imagined characters and situations from a grown-up perspective. Color, light, form and structure are the essential components that provide limitless compositional challenges as well as a framework upon which I suspend images, both observed and remembered. I hope to continue to explore new media and new ways of revealing the poetry and mystery in the familiar, visible world.