ALTERNATIVE TAKES (ON HUMAN IMPACT) Exhibit Announced At Spruce Peak Arts

Spruce Peak Arts has announced the Alternative Takes (on Human Impact) gallery exhibit, a group exhibition featuring three very different perspectives on the world around us, from the architecture of western civilization, to the natural world, to the individuals navigating both, accomplished with paint, collage, and graphite. Participating artists are: Misoo Bang, Richard Britell, and Mary Reilly.

Work will be on view by appointment from Wednesday, May 25 to Monday October 31, 2022. An opening reception to meet the artists will be held on Wednesday May 25 from 5 to 7pm. This event is free and open to the public.

South Burlington, VT based artist Misoo Bang is exhibiting work from three separate series in Alternative Takes.

The Giant Asian Girls are an acrylic painting and collage series that contemplates the unique intersection of gender-based violence and racial stereotypes for Asian women living in the United States. In one aspect, the work is a counterbalance to the western "fetishization" of Asian women, and in another, it is a fantasy narrative about the privilege of size.

The Giantess Series references a transformative, cultural response to patriarchy and male dominance by reversing the male-female power dynamic through physical size. Inwardly, however, it is a therapeutic intervention aimed at the women who modeled for the paintings, all of whom had been personally traumatized by male violence at some point in their lives.

The Lotus Flowers series celebrates the spiritual rebirth of women. Each portrait features the serene beauty of a woman surrounded by her own unique, meaningful imagery and empowering symbolism. The models have all been immersed in the collective "dark waters" of the female experience, but, like the lotus, they persistently thrived in places with the most adverse conditions and worked to purify themselves in the world of toxicity. With the encouragement and support of a Bodhisattva sisterhood, each has reached a higher place of peace and fulfillment.

Richard Britell, studied at Pratt Institute with Philip Pearlstein and Walter Erlebacher. His first show in NYC at Staempfli Gallery was sold out, and reviewed in the New York Times. The artist currently lives and works in Pittsfield, MA.

Britell's subject matter for Alternative Takes is drawn from the world of pre-modernist architecture. What he focuses on are brick facades, stonework structures and the elegant decorative embellishments that were once a standard feature of the gothic revival, neo-classical and other historicist styles of American urban architecture. These he depicts with a great deal of pictorial force

When asked, "why do you create art?", Britell responded, "A man said to an apple tree, 'Apple tree, why do you make so many apples?' The apple tree replied, 'I don't know why, I have no answer for that question.'" For Britell, "the act of mixing paint and applying it to a surface with a brush is as absolute and as primitively essential as speaking, or even breathing."

Mary Reilly, a New York artist who spent years exploring the five boroughs, provides a different lens for Alternative Take, one that explores the vastness of the natural world in shades of gray. Her works are exclusively created with graphite pencil on Coventry Smooth Paper. Says Reilly, "Traveling by foot through the wonders of nature and witnessing its eternal rhythms and determined perseverance against time is so inspiring [...]The state of mind that is instilled in me while walking through a forest, on the wilds of a riverbank or in an open i??eld of wildi??owers; the sense of nostalgia and the timelessness and diversity of nature's splendor evokes a silence that affords me a quiet introspection that translates into my artwork. ...My art rei??ects a human visceral need to see and to feel the effects that nature emanates". Reilly's work is exhibited Courtesy of Garvey|Simon New York, NY

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