Your Art Gallery for Home & Business Artworks

The twen­ty one artists of the Hills­bor­ough Gallery of Arts, will begin 2023 with a group show enti­tled MELTING. One word, Melt­ing, can evoke so many dif­fer­ent respons­es in cre­ative people.

For the gallery’s newest mem­ber, Catharine Carter, it evoked images of flood­ed homes and ris­ing water which are fre­quent­ly in the news and weath­er fore­casts these days. Says Catharine “I wor­ry about the future of our plan­et and the kind of world we are leav­ing to future generations.”

For painter Jude Lobe “Melt­ing” also evoked ideas of cli­mate change. “As an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, I imme­di­ate­ly envi­sioned a lone Polar Bear stand­ing on a bro­ken piece of ice with the sun set­ting in the back­ground. Of course, that image has been burned in our mind as cli­mate change is an impor­tant top­ic these days. This time I used Encaus­tic as a medi­um for a sub­tle infer­ence as in cre­at­ing with encaus­tic, you are ‘melt­ing’ the wax on a hard surface. ”

Fig­u­ra­tive sculp­tor, Lynn Wart­s­ki, was also think­ing about arc­tic cli­mates with her piece “So Many Ques­tions” which fea­tures a male emper­or pen­guin with his pen­guin chick. “I anthro­po­mor­phize the chick in this sculp­ture to be about the stage of a human 2 or 3 year old, when ques­tions start­ing with ‘why?’ are fre­quent­ly asked. I pic­ture this young chick ask­ing why it is tak­ing mom­my so long to walk back to the ice from the shore.”

Abstract painter Mar­cy Lans­man was­n’t think­ing about “melt­ing” when she cre­at­ed her paint­ing.  “I was play­ing with paint, hop­ing to cre­ate a pleas­ing com­po­si­tion.  Now when I look at what I cre­at­ed, I see melt­ing arc­tic islands, and I can give the paint­ing an envi­ron­men­tal inter­pre­ta­tion relat­ed to cli­mate change.”

Painters Nan­cy Smith and Chris Graeb­n­er weren’t think­ing about cli­mate change either, with their pieces for the show. Nan­cy’s paint­ing “Melt­ing into Spring” refers to that time of year when win­ter begins to give way. I tried to cap­ture the win­ter chill, bare trees, and the con­trast­ing soft begin­nings of new leaves sprout­ing. Botan­i­cal artist Chris Graeb­n­er’s paint­ing “Win­ter Kale” is of snow melt­ing on a head of bright pink orna­men­tal kale.