A Joint Show From Virginia Bradley & Chris Malcomson
The North Elm Home Gallery will host an opening reception for Investigations, a joint show, from husband and wife painters Virginia Bradley and Chris Malcomson on Saturday, July 6, from 5-8 pm
Investigations features recent works from both Bradley and Malcomson, who settled in the Berkshires from Philadelphia in 2017.
The show will be on view from Saturday, July 6 to Saturday, August 31. The North Elm Home Gallery is located at 5938 N Elm Ave, Millerton, NY. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday 10 am – 6 pm, and Sundays 11 am – 5 pm.
Featured paintings by Virginia Bradley and Chris Malcomson
Bradley’s Landing series was painted over the spring of 2019. The oil works on canvas were inspired by the Berkshire Mountains and the seemingly relentlessly volatile spring weather. The paintings represent Bradley’s three months of studio investigations with transparency, water, the night sky, all reaching toward the sublime.
Oil paintings on transparent, archival film, Bradley’s ongoing Playa Santa series is made in Playa Santa, Puerto Rico. In her roof-top studio, the sun’s 95-degree heat becomes an alchemical agent to transform oil paint on film. Bradley’s process includes multiple thin, often organic layers of poured paint. Each layer is left to dry in the direct sun where the mineral spirits evaporate leaving the oil paint residue. The layers combine to create the finished painting.
Malcomson’s Puerto Rico Watercolour series on paper is also influenced by his time on the island. For Malcomson, the ephemeral light and vibrant shades of the Caribbean Sea form the core of his investigations. In his roof-top studio, Malcomson uses the intense heat to quickly dry watercolour layers that create atmospheric, meditative paintings. He sees this series as an integration of previous abstract works with investigations of the seascape.
In his Abstract Oils on Paper series, Malcomson repeats the same composition in multiple works to concentrate on the use of color. The paintings are meant to enhance a living space over a long period of time through their stillness and tranquility. Many of these works are in various shades of red, a colour Malcomson has a particular fondness for because its many tones each provide a certain transparence that allows the lower layers to shine through.