Carlyle Wolfe’s art hangs on the walls of Southside Gallery on the Square Thursday. Photo: Katie Williamson
This month the Southside Gallery is featuring work by Carlyle Wolfe and Drew Galloway. Both exhibits are inspired almost exclusively by the natural world.
Wolfe is an Oxford native and adjunct professor of art at The University of Mississippi. Her work is described as having a poetic nature. Her exhibit, titled “Until the Day Breathes … ,” presents watercolors based on color studies done on mornings throughout the year.
“My paintings and works on paper are about awareness of the natural world — becoming progressively, cyclically more present to its rhythms, gaining deeper understanding of its design and acquiring direct experiential knowledge of its mysterious beauty,” Wolfe said.
Galloway is a native of Birmingham, Ala. His exhibit features rural landscapes and natural scenery and consists of oil paint on collaged metal and other reclaimed materials.
“Almost exclusively I go back to the same place and re-examine it in different seasons, Galloway said. “Usually I have a connection to the place, a creek where my child likes to play or a creek where I grew up playing myself. That way I have some sort of connection and that helps me tolerate the 40 hours to complete one of the paintings.”
Wolfe explains her work as beginning “quietly in drawing from observation. Outside the little house where I live, I gather various blooms and branches to draw — begonias, hydrangeas, zinnias, pink ladies, oak leaves, quince, camellias, lavender, lily of the valley …”
She creates line drawings and silhouettes that she cuts out of printed papers. The silhouettes are used as stencils, “for monotypes or paintings, or independently in site-specific installations,” she said. “Whole bodies of paintings and works on paper are developed simultaneously.”
Wolfe’s focus on light, time and space “attempts to allegorize many moments into one composition” according to Will Cook, manager of Southside Gallery.
“In the paintings, I use the same silhouette shapes to describe individual forms, but I also investigate times, seasons, weather conditions and shadows by referencing abiding observations of light and color,” Wolfe said.
Galloway views painting the way a writer looks at a blank piece of paper. He said it “can be intimidating but when something around has some kind of intrinsic beauty to it, it is easier to begin painting. I feel like I am collaborating with the material.”
Carlyle Wolfe’s art hangs on the walls of Southside Gallery on the Square Thursday.
Galloway said he appreciates things that have a little bit of age and character to them because it is easier to start painting when there is some beauty already there.
Galloway has several large paintings in the Southside exhibit and a series of smaller paintings that he called “vignettes.”
“They were paintings that I did for myself as studies,” he said. “They were mementos. Now I have enough (mementos) that I thought other people would be interested in them too.”
Galloway said he tries to depict beauty that is often overlooked.
“I try to capture the beauty in your backyard that most people ignore,” he said. “Sometimes the most beautiful places are the memories you have as a child that you miss. As an adult I go back – I do now what I did as a 7-year-old. It is like a full circle.”
The gallery hosts receptions as opportunities for artists to visit with fans and the local community. The Wolfe and Galloway reception will be held today from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
— Joanie Sanders
