A sample of works from the exhibition:

Natural Rhythms

November 15th, 2019 – January 11th, 2020

David Kessler | Jim Waid

Natural Rhythms, a two-person show featuring work by David Kessler and Jim Waid. Both artists have explored the delicate wonder of nature for decades. Their work reveals a heightened sense of our desert environment through skilled mark making and exceptional technique. In these artists’ masterful hands, one does not merely view the landscape; it becomes an experience.

For over twenty years, David Kessler has followed a Photo-Realist tradition, using acrylic and airbursh to vivify his landscapes, often the Arizona desert where he lives. These highly complex and consummately crafted paintings have drawn the attention of collectors and curators from all over the country. Kessler’s paintings invoke and utilize both the Romantic response to nature, one that eulogizes the sublime, awe-inspiring vista and the Classical response to landscape, which is lyrical and domesticated.

Jim Waid creates abstract worlds saturated with color, layered with mark, filled with rhythm and movement, and intricately textured.  His canvases barely contain the landscape painted upon them; lush with growth they invite the viewer to explore the space.  The artist said of his work, “I don’t want the paintings to be like you’re looking at a landscape.  I want them to feel like you’re in it.”  Initially the paintings seem nonrepresentational, however, they slowly reveal themselves to be made up of organic textures, abstracted natural forms, and the desert landscape.  They convey a sense of nature, without the specificity of traditional landscape painting.

IN THE PROJECT ROOM: Benjamin Masi

A sample of works on show:

Benjamin Masi‘s diverse upbringing was very influential to his selection of subject, use of color, and the simplicity of form in his work. Many of his ideas regarding composition are steeped in variations of classic motifs that go back to antiquity.

Masi’s Lava works draw on the inherent nature of the material, often juxtaposed and combined with classical mathematical ideas of proportion. This allows him to exploit the balance of proportion and color as defining elements. 

Natural Rhythms Catalog: