The sentiment of selecting meaningful artwork is shared by Susan Grissom. She is Gallery Director of the Lionheart Gallery, a contemporary gallery in Pound Ridge, N.Y.
According to Susan, the most important part of selecting artwork to finish a space is picking something that you love without regard to an overall central theme. And that means sometimes buying a quirky piece that may seem out of step with the overall layout of the room.
“A lot of contemporary art buyers are drawn to whimsical works. They want something that really speaks to them, “explained Grissom. “Art tends to dominate the room. So usually the piece chosen represents something about the homeowner.”
Grissom often meets with decorators and clients in her gallery to explain the narrative behind some of the artists’ vision. This can become a catalyst for them to discover some of her galleries most interesting pieces for display.
For example, some of the gallery’s best-selling works were created by Betsy Podlach. An artist considered by some to be the Cindy Sherman of the portrait world, Podlach specializes in creating paintings depictions of animals within unusual environments.
“I’ve have several people recently buy her rabbit and dog portraits,” Grissom shares with a laugh. “I was really surprised because it all happened within two weeks. Bunny rabbits that were sitting charmingly and one of a leaping dog. Really sort of humorous pieces. But all of the buyers said that they saw something that made them smile.”
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There’s something Matisse-like about the nudes of Betsy Podlach.
Perhaps it’s the flat shapes of saturated colors that evoke Japanese woodblock prints. Or the dancing quality of the figures. Or the primal sense that you are looking at something that happened a long time ago.
“A lot of people say that,” Podlach observes of comparisons with the Fauve master. “You can’t escape his genius.”
Nor can you escape the genius of others in her work.
“Titian is a major influence for the way he uses the body and paint,” she says.
Viewers may also see a touch of Pierre Bonnard in the intimacy of the domestic vignettes she creates (“The Pink Room,” 2006); or Cézanne and Renoir in her sunbathers (“The Beach,” 1998); or Manet in her diners al fresco au naturel (“Lunch,” 2007).
What art lovers may not see is the effect of the Abstract Expressionists, who used bold colors and forms to convey thought and emotion in their paintings and to make New York the capital of the art world in the middle of the 20th century. Unlike Podlach’s, however, the canvases of the Abstract Expressionists, who were also known collectively as the New York School, were not representational.
Still, she says, “It’s an American thing. Those were our heroes. They were the masters when I graduated (from Harvard with honors) in 1987.”
Indeed, her mentor was Nicolas Carone, a member of the New York School and a founding faculty member of the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture in Manhattan, which Podlach attended along with the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy, before receiving a master of fine arts degree in sculpture from the New York Academy of Art in 2001.
The Abstract Expressionist connection is not as remote as you may think. Artists like Jackson Pollock spent hours copying El Grecos and Michelangelos in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in part because the figure is the basis of all art. It is the basis of Podlach’s art, where the Surrealist painters’ love of symbols, psychology, literature and especially Greco-Roman mythology also comes into play.
“I love novels,” says Podlach, who also studied literature at Harvard with Mexican novelist and essayist Carlos Fuentes. “I started listening to ‘The Odyssey’ and ‘The Iliad,’ and I’d have these dreams of these characters, and I started imagining their lives.”
There’s Diana, the severely chaste goddess of the hunt, with her bow and quiver of arrows and one breast provocatively bare; Mercury, the mischievous messenger-god, with his golden-winged feet; and Mars, the petulant god of war, taking a rest from his destructive labors with his helmet on his furry lap. As Mars sleeps, a dove watches him – from a safe distance.
Podlach’s painting of “Cupid and Psyche,” in which Psyche watches her love-god hubby as he sleeps while holding one of his phallic arrows, is not only reminiscent of any number of Renaissance and Neoclassical masters for its subject and treatment. It allows the viewer to consider Podlach’s mastery of the male and female nudes.
“It’s more exciting to do a male nude, only because I’m not a guy and it’s not as easy to access every single angle of the male body,” she says. “We talk of the beauty of the female body, but the male body is beautiful, too, the way the torso meets the legs.”
Does she think this is a post-feminist moment in which women can express themselves sexually, as her male and female nudes suggest?
“I hope so, but I’m not sure,” she says. “I remember Cosmo(politan magazine) when I was growing up was all about having orgasms. Now it’s all about multiple orgasms.”
But it’s “ridiculous” to think that women haven’t always tapped into their physical, erotic natures, she adds – especially if those women happen to be artists.
“The thing about painting is that it’s so physical,” says Podlach, who also spent years painting in Paris.
If so, then Podlach leads a very physical life, for she paints “every day and as long as I can at all hours” in the studio of her home in Hampton Bays near Southampton, N.Y. She takes a break by swimming in the bay and the ocean, gardening and playing with Malcolm, her sweet Bernese Mountain Dog/Labrador Retriever mix.
Podlach stretches her own canvases, which are made of Belgian linen and range in size from about a couple of feet in width and length to six feet. She preps them with a gesso made of rabbit-skin glue, then builds forms and layers with oils and egg tempera, a technique that is used in fresco painting.
“It’s very matte. It’s the oils that make it glossy.”
Podlach, who’s exhibiting her paintings at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge, says in her artist’s statement, “My images of women and men start by observing my own reflection in a mirror, a man I know modeling for me, or photos of women and or men from other eras.”
She elaborates for WAG, “I started out painting other people – friends, not models. Eventually, people have real lives. They got older.”
So like Vincent van Gogh, she began painting herself. But it would be a mistake to think of her female nudes as portraits of the artist. Rather, Podlach views the nude the way the art historian Kenneth Clark did, as a kind of performance. These are characters, much as Cindy Sherman’s cinematic photographs of herself are character studies and a type of performance art.
What Podlach’s work also conveys is the sensuousness of the human body – male and female.
“We have this physical power,” she says. “We have this hope. We have this potential.”
You can view Betsy Podlach’s nudes at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge. “I love it,” she says of the recently renovated space. “The light is gorgeous. You can see the layers of paint. And I love Susan,” she adds of gallery director Susan D. Grissom (featured in the June 2013 issue of WAG).
The feeling is mutual. “Betsy Podlach’s paintings are enchanting, depicting an intimacy with one’s own self,” Grissom says. “It is like being a voyeur when one looks at a Betsy Podlach painting and takes a glimpse into a rich, metaphoric artist life.”
For more on the gallery, visit thelionheartgallery.com. And for more on Podlach’s work, visit betsypodlach.com.
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I wanted to pay homage today to an artist whose work I find to be completely and utterly mesmerizing…I feel beyond lucky to own an original piece of this artists work…and count it as a purchase I will never do anything but be incredibly thankful for.
Here’s Ms. Ophelia….as I like to call her…in my living room…I adore her. She truly is enchanting and makes my entire living room come to life.
I wish I could show you in photos the real beauty that is her face…hard to come across in pictures…her eyes seem to follow you as you move around the room…but not in a spooky way…in a moving/soulful way.
A look through Betsy’s portfolio, and one can start to see how incredibly arresting her work really is. Most of Betsy’s work is large in scale, which makes it even that much more captivating.
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Betsy Podlach is a visual artist. Several works by the artist have been sold at auction, including ‘Still life with lilacs’ sold at Clarke Auction ‘Holiday Fine Art, Midcentury & Antique Auction’ in 2012.
The new solo show at Nardin Galleries in Somers features the gutsy, lushly colored oils and watercolors of Betsy Podlach, plus some of her drawings. Somewhat reminiscent of early 20th-century Russians like Soutine, her work borders on the primitive and Expressionistic.
Ms. Podlach, only 27 years old, has won several grants and awards over the last 13 years from Harvard University, the International School of Art in Monte Castello de Vibio, Italy, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Thomas J. Watson Memorial Scholarship and others. She has shown in Italy, Manhattan, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Prices for the 40 works on view through Sept. 28 range from $500 for drawings to $2,200 for an oil still life. There will be a reception next Saturday from 4 to 6 P.M. The gallery, on Route 202, is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Call 276-8485 for more information. OFFBEAT COMEDIENNE
The comedienne Paula Poundstone will give a single performance at the Performing Arts Center of Purchase College on Friday at 8 P.M. Her offbeat improvisational act has earned her a number of cable television awards, but her foray into network television in the 1992 “Paula Poundstone Show” was short lived.
She has made numerous appearances on the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows, “Saturday Night Live,” comedy specials on cable and network channels, and she played her first straight dramatic role on the NBC series “Reasonable Doubts” early this year. In 1992 she was a headliner at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, performing before an audience of journalists, Congressional and Cabinet members and President George Bush.
Tickets for Friday’s show are $15 and $18 and may be reserved by calling 251-6200, or Ticketmaster, 454-3388. The college is on Anderson Hill Road in Purchase. GRANGE FAIR
The 70th Annual Yorktown Grange Fair opens at Rochambeau Park on Moseman Avenue, Yorktown Heights, with an admission-free preview on Thursday from 6 to 10 P.M. Rides and concessions will be open, and visitors can pay $7 for any and all amusement rides during the entire four hours. The fair will continue through Sunday.
Friday’s agenda from 10 A.M. to 11 P.M. includes judging of flowers, rabbits, produce and baked goods; the King Arthur Circus; a Battle of the Bands, and the Monster Truck, which will be available for rides when it isn’t demonstrating its car-crushing skills. Among the circus performers are a group of boxer dogs that play soccer. The circus and the Monster Truck will perform daily through Sunday.
Saturday’s hours from 10 A.M. to 11 P.M. will be filled with poultry and livestock judging, a clogging exhibition by the Tusker Trompers, a tractor parade with live commentary about each vehicle’s age and use, and a variety of music. The tractors and a collection of gas engines will go on display until the fair ends.
Gates open at 10 A.M. on Sunday and close at 9 P.M. There will be dog obedience demonstrations, dog and rabbit costume contests, an exhibition of antique farm equipment and an auction of all the prize-winning fruits, vegetables, jams, jellies, pickles, relishes and baked goods.
Displays of flowers, needlework, handmade rugs, quilts and afghans, and livestock in a new exhibition building will be ongoing from Friday through Sunday, and there will be numerous food concessions for pizza, fish and chips, German, Greek and other ethnic specialties.
Source: East Coast Home Publishing | Sep 29, 2014
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