Reception / Opening: ILKA LIST, DORIS LUBELL, CAROL BARSHA, RIA RAY

DEEP DIVING:  Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by ILKA LIST, DORIS LUBELL, CAROL BARSHA and RIA RAY ... Through July 17, 2014

Four women artists explore the metaphysical and subconscious language of humanity through their art.

Ilka List draws inspiration from her dream images, ideas from Active Imagination, and Life for her Terra cotta and Bronze bas-reliefs. Her work follows her interests, both intellectual and emotional. She also paints, is a published author, essayist and illustrator. Her prolific career includes commissioned large scale painted bas-relief sculptures and murals for public and institutional spaces. She has taught art in various capacities, is the recipient of numerous Fellowships and Grants, and has exhibited her work extensively since 1978 in solo and group shows, including a solo retrospective in 2007 at the Woodstock Art Association and Museum, in Woodstock, NY. Her work is held in many private and public collections across the world. She lives and works on Martha's Vineyard. 

Doris Lubell 's oil paintings and pen and ink drawings transcend time and space, reality and fantasy. The mysteries of identity and relationship to other worldly realms are explored in her abstract expressionist paintings, and detailed drawings, which seem in direct opposition to one another. Lubell graduated from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts in 1954, has been engaged in the arts her entire life, as an artist, an art therapist and art teacher. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, LA; and others. She has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows all over the USA for the past fifty years. She lives and works in Edgartown.

Carol Barsha’s works on paper and canvas are influenced by nature as well as imagined phenomena. She works in ink, gouache, pastel and oil. Her subjects vary from flowers, to books and boats. A flower series is largely based on plein air sketching sessions at Beetlebung Farm in Chilmark. Her boats, oar-less and void of automatic references appear as symbols for passages of life – floating beneath what could be interpreted as a scrim of calligraphy. Barsha has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows since the last 1970s, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the National Jewish Museum, Washington DC. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and many other publications. She Lives in Washington DC and spends time on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer.

Ria Ray works on canvas with mixed media, including acrylics, paper, photographs, found objects and poetry. A steadfast pull of the collective soul ignites and informs her work. With bold fields of color and texture that seem to reflect light – Ray’s abstract paintings serve as talismans for diving deeper in consciousness. Ray began painting after losing her entire immediate family in a tragic accident two decades ago – as an extension of a healing practice she founded. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Los Angeles area, including UCLA, and is held in many private and Fortune 500 corporate collections across the USA. She lives in Los Angeles, and spends time in New York and on Martha’s Vineyard.

Selected works by these four artists will be exhibited through July 17, 2014

Other artists include: Rez Williams, Mariana Cook, Doug Kent, Stella Waitzkin, Edward Grazda, James Langlois, Cindy Kane, Christopher Wright, Billy Hoff, Ed Schulman, Alejandro Carreño, Margo Ouellette, Beth Parker, Roxann Leibenhaut, Harry Seymour, Jane Rainwater, Claudio Gasparini, Robert Morrison and others.