Art Exhibit & Reception

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE | Architectural Interiors

 

April 17-18, 2010

1-5pm

515. N Blount St

Join us at the Lewis-Smith house as we celebrate a collection of work by Gayle Stott Lowry. The exhibit will feature paintings of the interior of several Blount Street Commons historic homes.

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
Architectural Interiors

by

GAYLE STOTT LOWRY

These paintings represent transitions from one place to another, one realm to another, one state of being to another.  Familiar spaces are revisited, unfamiliar ones are explored, creating the tension that exists between the two.  Within the structure there is integration of the light and the dark

Things are discarded, left behind, released as forward movement takes place.  The silence that results from this solitude is an essential element of this process.  Focus is refined, adjustments are made, and vision is clarified in these expansive, uninhabited rooms.  This creates a place for new inspiration, new life.

The historic mansions depicted are themselves in a state of transition.  Having been utilized as office space by the State of North Carolina for the past 20 years, they are currently vacant and awaiting sale near downtown Raleigh in order to return them to their intended residential usage.  In varying states of disrepair and neglect, they anticipate their restoration to their original elegance and grandeur.

The textured, impasto paint of some of the paintings, created with a palette knife, is suggestive of the rough, crumbling surfaces brought about by lack of care and passage of time.  Evidence of the life that was lived in these houses remains in the beautiful irregularities of the surfaces. The smoother paint application on other paintings, created with a brush, gives a more refined appearance to the rooms and suggests the potential that exists in the process of transformation.

Just like these houses, we transition as we live our lives.  May we gain insight, clarity, and acceptance of our own wounds, our own uneven patina and our own light and darkness.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gayle Stott Lowry

Gayle Stott Lowry studied art and primary education at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC.  Additional studies with Wolf Kahn and Sidney Goodman, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center provided further training.

Her introspective paintings have been awarded, exhibited and collected on a national basis over the past twenty years.  Solo exhibitions have been held at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; Art6 in Richmond, Virginia; Artspace in Raleigh, NC; and private galleries in New Orleans and North Carolina.  Recently, the North Carolina Museum of Art acquired her large-scale landscape painting for their permanent collection.  Other corporate collections include The City of Raleigh, Glaxo Smith Kline, Progress Energy and IBM.

Painting for Lowry involves an intuitive process integrating insight from dreams and therapy, resulting in work that correlates directly with her life experience.  She has participated in lectures on the Creative Process, Dreams and Psychoanalysis around the U.S.  The daily act of creating art is an essential part of her existence.