For Bob: Boston Painting to Benefit Robert Ferrandini
Julia von Metzsch: Midnight at Coolidge Point II
February 7 – March 1 at Gallery NAGA
In February Gallery NAGA presents a charity exhibition, For Bob: Boston Painting to Benefit Robert Ferrandini, and a show of work by an exciting new painter, Julia von Metzsch.
For Bob: Boston Painting to Benefit Robert Ferrandini and Julia von Metzsch: Midnight at Coolidge Point II both run from February 7 to March 1. A reception for the artists and public will be held on Friday, February 7 from 6 to 8 pm.
The participating artists and Gallery NAGA are donating 100% of the selling price to Robert Ferrandini. The artists donating 100% of the selling price of their work to Robert Ferrandini, are close to home. They have formed a community that has supported Ferrandini since his 2001 stroke, which rendered his painting hand unresponsive and challenged him to train his left hand. They are:
Gerry Bergstein Roger Kizik
Gail Boyajian John McNamara
Peter Brooke David Moore
Alice Denison Charles Norris
Jeremy Foss Diane Norris
Rick Harlow Jonathan Stangroom
Emily Harris
The exhibition includes a painting by each of the donating artists and a few new paintings by Ferrandini. The watercolors by Ferrandini are as mystical and grand as ever, even in their 18×24” format.
In addition to the proceeds from the sale of the paintings, Gallery NAGA has set up an online fundraiser through which the public can contribute to Ferrandini’s continued recovery, www.youcaring.com/forBob.
Robert Ferrandini will be having an exhibition at the Danforth Museum in Framingham that will run from from February 26 through March 30.
In her first ever exhibition at Gallery NAGA, Julia von Metzsch presents a body of work that is vigorous and complex.
Von Metzsch received her BA in 2007 and Masters in 2010 in Fine Arts from Boston University, and then returned to Boston University as a MFA Painting Fellow at the School of Visual Arts. There she studied with John Walker, whose intensity and confidence in painting guided von Metzsch and her work away from the gentler seascapes she had been doing towards more abstract and fantastical work.
Although still residing in Boston, von Metzsch continues to find inspiration from the ocean, and points to her childhood in Manchester-by-the-Sea as integral to her creativity, “Growing up on a cold coast leads to a lot of alone time and daydreaming on the beach; the North Shore is a good place to dream and create.”
Her new paintings are both grounded and representational and spiritual and abstract. Only after unraveling her abstract mark making is one able to make sense of the story that lies beneath. Her works depict stories, she says, not only from childhood memories, but also from “ridiculous ideas [that] can lead to good paintings,” like a starfish ring from her mother that she thought resembled a corpse.
Underneath heavily painted forms, often in the shape of sea birds or fish, which appear to hover on the surface, von Metzsch uses transparent layers of paint to achieve depth and illusion. This disjunction between the layers of paint application creates a captivating sense of uneasiness.
School of Visual Arts exhibitions director Lynne Cooney describes von Metzsch’s work, previously displayed at the Sherman Gallery at Boston University, as lush, dark, and abstract. “The paintings are not a literal response,” Cooney says. “They are visually intuitive and painterly responses to the ocean and coastline.”