Loren MacIver
Drawings

April 6 - May 6, 2006

The gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Loren MacIver’s works on paper. The show includes works from two periods – the late 1930s and early 1960s. Mediums include pastel, charcoal and watercolor on paper. There will be twenty-one pieces in the exhibition. Also included will be sketchbook pages that were studies for important paintings (“Le Bonne Table,” “Snail Maze,” and “Votive Lights”).

Drawings are grouped together by locale (Key West, Provincetown, Paris and New York City) and indicate MacIver’s seismic sensitivity to the details of place. Vivid pastel on black paper with marks that deploy a descriptive shorthand make up a series called “Sidewalk Drawings.” In “Crossing the Dunes,” tiny childlike figures float on top of a shack amid the winter dunes of Provincetown. The pieces all strongly convey their sense of place by concentrating on specific details of vernacular ephemera. Elizabeth Bishop wrote of MacIver’s work, “beautiful colored atmosphere and the out-of-focus, dream detail...divine myopia.” MacIver’s work seems to be lit from within, emanating translucent color.

When describing one of her paintings, MacIver said, “imagine a lobster in its glory, like phosphorus at sea.” Inspired by everyday objects and themes, MacIver captures them on her surfaces like flotsam – free-floating objects rendered with a sfumato touch contributing to a dream-like sense of drifting consciousness. Her work has a hieroglyphic quality with objects and people rendered symbolically. There is strong sense of playfulness and the work has a naïve rendering that feels contemporary, especially in some of the earliest work from the 1930s.