BOOTH, GOLDBERG, LOGAN 2016

It is true that beauty can be found everywhere, but it is equally true that it often takes an artist to show us the way. May First Friday at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art brings together three artists inspired by a sense of place. The diversity in each of their unique environments is evident yet together their work speaks to the transcendence of the everyday into beautiful and expressive works of art. Stan Goldberg finds beauty in the urban spring gardens of New York City, while the neighborhoods of Kansas City inspire the paintings of Cathy Logan. Jane Booth’s paintings reflect the wide-open space of her home base in rural Kansas as her expressive color fields reflect the rolling landscape that surrounds her.

Jane Booth

“I see the process of painting as capturing the movement of life through space.”
– Jane Booth

Jane Booth lives and paints far from the city in rural Kansas. Inside her light-filled studio, vistas of landscape and weather fill every window. The space feels as though it is a sanctuary for the imagination and it hums with positive energy. The vast studio floor, is ornamented with paint remnants, escapees from the vividly poured color of Booth’s saturated canvases. A splash or drop of paint at a time has created a painted territory, patterning the surface of the floor as if it were a diagram for an elaborate dance step. Energetic color-filled canvases, in various states of completion, lie on the floor or rest against the wall like sunbathers at the beach or, perhaps more aptly, like baseball players waiting for their turn at bat. Tables are filled with the tools of the trade – brushes, buckets, and paint at the ready.

For an artist, there is no place that they would rather be than the studio. It is the arena where the real work of making art takes place, where life and idea come together. For Jane Booth, this place grounds and nurtures her and makes possible the unfettered freedom she expresses in her exploration of color, atmosphere, line and form.

Booth’s paintings begin as a physical endeavor. Huge swaths of raw canvas are rolled out on the floor and saturated with poured color until canvas and paint are bonded as one. The resulting paintings seem a part of nature, becoming atmosphere, environment and stage, holding memories of land and light, insight and mystery, longing and finding. Sensitive, subtle and honest, Jane Booth’s paintings reveal wide-open spaces of strength, openness and vulnerability. Ultimately, they disclose the artist’s trust in the continuity and richness of life, within and without, and express a poetic vision of creativity, intellect and passion.

Jane Booth’s paintings are in more than 300 private collections and numerous museum and corporate collections including the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum, Polsinelli Shughart PC, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Emprise Bank, Cisco Systems, H&R Block World Headquarters, Hilton Hotels, and Kansas University Heart Hospital.

Cathy Logan

Cathy Logan moved back to Kansas City in 2012, more than forty years after she left as a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. Logan never forgot the charm and feel of the city and, in part, that is what drew her back. Based in the Columbus Park neighborhood, Logan set out to explore the city on her bicycle just as she had years ago as a young artist.

Traveling slowly through Kansas City’s many individual and architecturally eclectic neighborhoods, Logan found that the city she remembered was much the same but also in a state of change. Kansas City is made up of houses and buildings filled with invented, borrowed, adapted and embellished architectural forms. Together they form a blend of neighborhoods, some neglected, others treasured, but all of individual character, eclectic design, and style. Logan felt that in Kansas City’s neighborhoods, she had discovered places rich in character and story. The kind of places that Henry Miller referred to when he said, “The streets sing, the stones talk.” Logan’s sensitivity and insight reflect upon the essence of Kansas City, as her paintings capture the geometry of simple structures exaggerated by light and shadow.

Cathy Logan has an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. This exhibition is her first at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art.

Stanley Goldberg

Throughout art history, flowers have been depicted by artists ranging from 17th century Dutch painters to artists of the 20th century such as Georgia O’Keefe, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Stanley Goldberg’s large-scale photographs transform exotic tulip and iris varieties into abstractions of color and light Goldberg captures a moment in the life cycle of each flower, from the first blossom to the last faded bloom. He gives us an entry into a thrilling dreamlike world of exuberant color and delicacy while also documenting the fragility of all life.

4Goldberg finds his inspiration in two astonishing non-profit urban gardens, one in New York City and the other in Upper Montclair, NJ. During growing season, he spends every day in the garden observing and taking photographs of the more that 15,000 tulips and 10,000 irises. From these two urban sanctuaries, Goldberg creates photographs that are portraits of a vast universe of beauty and strength.

Stanley Goldberg lives and works in New York City. He has created works for major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, and The Bishop Museum of Honolulu, Hawaii. His work also resides in private collections and corporations, including Truman Medical Center, Center for the Healing Arts, Kansas City, MO.

These exhibitions will be open
May 6, 2016 – June 18, 2016.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11-5 p.m. & by appointment.
For past exhibitions, please visit our archive.