KATHERINE SANDOZ

VERNONBURG: A MARCH SURVEY

Exhibition Details

March 5 – May 18, 2019

Reception – March 14th, 2019, 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Artist Talk – May 2nd, 6 pm

Laney Contemporary is pleased to announce a new series by artist katherine sandoz entitled VERNONBURG. Sandoz pays homage to the Georgia community where she has lived and worked since 2004.

In this exhibition, a dozen large-scale paintings seem to weave one into the next with a diorama-effect encouraging the viewer to experience this variegated low country, rural neighborhood located just south of Savannah, which is a tapestry of field, forest, swamp, river and marsh. Small-scale paintings developed alongside the larger ventures re-explore observations of the same abstracted vistas such as morning glories at the bluff, azaleas, cassia and wisteria blooms. Painted over the last year, the survey of the neighborhood is that of geography, flora, seasonal shifts, weather conditions, and the subtlety of light transitions on a given day. A number of the works document flowers that neighbors have gifted as reference for future paintings now realized.

In all of the works, Sandoz layers water-based paint to create shifting light, colors, and forms. She weaves together the nearest and most distant planes to suggest formal and metaphorical relationships between the largest land masses and the most delicate floral interiors. Her attentive process celebrates the idea of home, that is hers, but as it radiates to encompass the natural world and its beauty, we recognize that it belongs to all of us. Utilizing passages of transparent and opaque, warm and cool, textured and smooth, Sandoz’ application is versatile, creating works on panel, canvas, paper, large scale wall-treatments and murals. Her dynamic compositions encourage the viewer to experience an expanded, kaleidoscopic perception of nature, an opportunity that is available daily, if we choose to see.