In the Boston Globe Cate McQuaid reports that George Nick, one of the teachers at Massachusetts College of Art when I got my BFA back in the day, may be 82, but he’s still growing as a painter. “His exhibit at Gallery NAGA is alive with texture, and tone, and […]
Tag: Cate McQuaid
Line: Evidence of movement and purpose
In Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye wrote that a “line is a denial of all inertia and paralysis, all doubt and hesitation…(it) is both movement and purpose: whatever the medium of the art, the line exists neither in time or space, but in their eternal and infinite union.” Poet Susan Goldwitz […]
Cindy Bernard: Can you hear me?
In the Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid writes that Cindy Bernard‘s poignant show at Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery evokes the far-flung community of ham radio operators who kept in touch long before the Internet and blogging made world-building so common. “Artist Cindy Bernard’s grandfather, Bill Adams, got his […]
Chapuis and Mattera: “Stop thinking and just gaze on something beautiful”
In the Boston Globe Cate McQuaid reports that some artists make art not as a means of provocation or cultural commentary, but for beauty’s sake. “Katharina Chapuis, who has a show at Alpha Gallery, and Joanne Mattera, who has encaustics (paintings made with pigmented wax) up at Arden Gallery, work […]
Cristina Toro’s cheery dissonance
In the Boston Globe Cate McQuaid reports that “Toro’s tender, bright, riotous canvases at LaMontagne Gallery captivate with their abundant detail and their range of references. One painting may include nods to Victorian valentines, Turkish decorative arts, needlework, and Josef Albers’s color theory. Toro, a Puerto Rican-born artist who now […]
Laylah Ali: Life of the mind
Laylah Ali’s drawing show, opening at the Decordova Museum today, features flat, seemingly naif drawings of costumed characters, layered with handwritten text. Random thought, overheard conversations and snippets of news stories create complex, enigmatic poem-like narratives. In the Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid visits Ali in her Williamstown, MA, studio. “A […]
Old-timers in Provincetown: Herman Maril, Robert Henry
Boston Globe critic Cate McQuaid reports on a few painting shows in Provincetown. “Herman Maril: An Artist’s Two Worlds,” Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA. Through Oct. 12. “You may not know Maril, who died in 1986. He was an artist who leaned into spare representation when his colleagues […]
Kentridge print show in Williamstown
William Kentridge works in the tradition of socially and politically engaged artists such as William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, Honore Daumier, and Kathe Kollwitz . He’s interested in the human condition, specifically the history of apartheid in South Africa, where he grew up, and the ways in which our personal and […]
Aho at Alpha
In the Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid reports that Eric Aho’s earnest new paintings of the icy Vermont landscape are wild in more ways than one. “There’s the way he slashes paint over his canvas, with bold, big, unfettered strokes. And there are the places he portrays, plunging his viewers deep […]
Boston flooded with Cuban water metaphors
In the Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid reports that “Surrounded by Water” is too small to cover such a broad theme successfully. “These works of art are often striking; they were made by a range of artists, from established to emerging. But it’s a smallish exhibit, with work by about 15 […]
