In  Hammershøi’s interiors, most people, like “Woman Seen from the Back” (1888), are turned away or preoccupied.

During my recent preview stroll through the Vilhelm Hammershøi painting exhibition at the Frye Museum, the staff seemed a bit concerned about potential attendance — understandably so.

Besides the fact that the 19th-century Danish artist Hammershøi is an unfamiliar name to most people, his work does not present the immediate dazzle and charm of his exact contemporaries, the Impressionists, whose crowd-pleasing celebrations of color, urban energy and pleasure are the opposite of Hammershøi’s focus on solitude, silence and a universe reduced to shades of gray.

Once one overcomes, however, the initial shock of encountering such a restrained and understated vision, the subtle and sophisticated pleasures of this very eccentric artist’s work start to become apparent.

The voluptuous pink paintings of Ellen Ziegler, now on view at Vermillion on Capitol Hill, depict roly-poly floating objects that are unmoored from everyday reality. Like other artists who practice dimensional abstraction, Ziegler skillfully uses the tools of realism, like shading and perspective, to make her creations look solid and convincing, but they aren’t depictions of anything in particular. What they lack in familiarity, however, they make up with their highly kinetic visual energy.

​Ziegler’s creatures billow like clouds, writhe like eels, sprout appendages and spray out excretions; they suggest, among other things, various life forms, both large and microscopic. Everything is painted in the same shade of red, and part of the show is devoted to an illustrated discussion of the type of red in question — vermilion — and its long and rich history. ​Ziegler also posts a short homage to Vermillion the venue, the bar/gallery that is hosting the current show and ended up with this exhibit partly because of the coincidence of names.

Three Puget Sound communities with high aspirations and energetic patrons have recently opened art museums close to their respective waterfronts: Winslow, Edmonds and Friday Harbor. Can a boat-to-the-art tour be far behind?

Friday Harbor is a particularly interesting case in point. Long before its current, architecturally striking building opened just a brief walk from the ferry dock, there was an entity called the San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA), a mostly volunteer group of local art lovers who mounted small, artistically ambitious exhibitions in vacant storefronts, sometimes with long gaps between shows. Seeking more permanent digs, in 2013 the museum purchased an unprepossessing emergency medical center which, after being imaginatively opened out with glass atriums and weathered-steel cladding, officially launched in February 2015 with an exhibition of glass art by Northwest legend William Morris.

Typewriter tornadoes and bicycle orgies — Andre Petterson’s machine portraits with a twist - published in Seattle Times,  November 12, 2015

Gray skies have you feeling lethargic? Here’s an art exhibition to jolt you back into shape — the hyperactive machine portraits of Vancouver, B.C., artist Andre Petterson, now showing at Foster/White in Pioneer Square. Typewriters explode and multiply; bicycles are buried in ribbons; and energetic streams of paint, ink and pencil pulse through space like waves of sound, or bursts of electricity.

It’s all very eye-catching and kinetic; Petterson’s pictorial dramas are bold, musical and even humorous. Neither the titles (“Riddle 2,” “Whiteout,” “Sling 2”) nor his own artist statements give much away in terms of what the intriguing images might be about, but these are pictures that clearly make visual sense — and it’s up to us to figure out what that might be.

A vinyl floor with delusions of grandeur - Published in Seattle Times, October 20, 2015.
 
​There are two narratives that accompany a contemporary work of art. One is our experience of the piece itself. The second is what the artist says about the piece; such statements are a standard component of modern exhibitions. Theoretically, there should be a close relationship between the two, but occasionally there is a major disconnect, when the artist’s own words seem to have little to do with the artwork in front of us.

Tiny Skagit County town nurtures fledgling art scene - Published in Seattle Times, September 15, 2015

Artists and artisans seeking alternatives to the big city have always been drawn to picturesque locations, like tiny Edison (pop. 130) in the Skagit Valley, whose funky storefronts now house bakeries, restaurants, a boutique and two serious (non-tourist) art galleries. The just-opened i.e., run by two expat Seattle painters, has already featured several strong shows, and this month’s two-person exhibition featuring Emily Gherard and Brian Cypher is no exception.

Both Gherard and Cypher create work, which is uncompromisingly personal and gritty, eschewing easily recognizable imagery for abstract or nearly abstract compositions emphasizing materials and process.

Emily’s work is darker, more worked, and highly meditative, purged of all but the most subtle color and playing with the fluid boundaries that separate depth from flatness, objects in the real world from concepts in the artist’s mind.  Her two subjects – walls and rocks – allow her to indulge her love of surface, as both walls and rocks can support any manner of texture or smoothness, achieved here by a long and complicated process of building up, scraping back, layering on, and mixing both wet and dry media.  Both Emily and Bryan’s shows are great examples of work that can only be fully appreciated in person, as the subtle physical qualities of their paintings are lost in reproduction.  ​