PUTNEY — In this exceptionally difficult time for artists who want to exhibit their work in a gallery setting, there is a show currently on view in the gallery at Next Stage Arts that is well worth a safe visit.
I have known Susan Parenti and her work for a quarter century, during which time I've had the pleasure of visiting her studio - engaging in lively conversation, viewing works in progress, and witnessing her artistic development.
And I must say that the body of work on view at Next Stage Arts constitutes the most delicious imaginable fruits of her labors.
Parenti has recently made a shift from geometric abstraction, something she has excelled at for many years, into the world of landscape, and the work you will see on exhibit is the work of an artist who is at once a mystical master and a sorceress of sensuality.
Delicate washes of color seem to defy the molecular structure of oil paint; air and light are undifferentiated from solid mass. These landscape paintings are visions that beg the viewer to forfeit any conceptual experience of nature in favor of an inward journey.
One stands before the paintings and enters into a world that whispers of all that is sacred in nature.
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In each of the nine landscape paintings on view, physical accuracy is expunged, and what is revealed in its place is a phenomenological investigation of the truths awarded us by earth and sky: That all is ever-shifting and impermanent, that a journey down a path in a forest can lead to transformation, that the world we behold with our eyes is at once a shimmer of the ephemeral and a glimmer of the eternal.
Alongside these mysterious landscapes you will view three figure drawings, offerings that speak simply of what it means to be an embodied being grazing against open, indeterminate space.
And view the single geometric abstraction both from afar and up close, and you will experience a metaphysical invitation not unlike that offered in the landscape paintings.
It's simple to see the show in a safe way. The front door at Next Stage is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day. For viewing at other times, email Parenti at [email protected], and she'll be happy to meet you for a guided tour.
Don't miss this work by a mystical wise woman in her artistic prime as she enters her 80th year.