Deborah Barlow & Pat Mattina Abstractions

The Lyman-Eyer Gallery, 432 Commercial Street in Provincetown, is pleased to announce new work by Deborah Barlow & Pat Mattina. Please peruse their unique abstractions on http://www.lymaneyerart.com/.

Deborah Barlow’s new work continues to explore the atmospheric qualities of layering the painting surface with powdered pigments. Using a unique technique that she has been developing over the last 26 years, her paintings achieve dimensionality and depth without the use of traditional techniques of representation or perspective. “In a culture that over-identifies with rationalism, the collective map of reality overlooks what lies outside that narrowly-defined frame. Getting closer to what isn’t obvious usually means slowing down, paying attention to what may seem subtle or insignificant--the crack in a wall, vague markings on a sandstone butte. Painting is the best way I know of bringing that liminality to the surface. I want my work to create a new sense of place, an alternative atmosphere that speaks for what is indecipherable.”

Barlow writes of her new body of work… “Nature is everywhere in my work, but what compels me most is the natural world at the edges. The extremes are most provocative to me, such as the emptiness of a desert expanse or the intricate layering of a microscopic world view. It’s what isn’t obvious that keeps me looking, and I look without any desire to mimic or reproduce those marginal worlds. My paintings are not objects as much as they are a record of how to search—how to listen (aurally and visually) multi-dimensionally and how to respond to what I hear without fixing it in a representation, without imprisoning it in a picture. The complexity of the surface is a complexity of perceiving, synthesizing, and navigating a limitless world.” Deborah Barlow was one of a select group of American artists invited to participate in the 2003 Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy. She was an artist-in-residence at Anam Cara in West County Cork, Ireland and has exhibited her work nationally.

Pat Mattina’s current body of work is entitled Earth Songs of Peace. “I paint to practice being present in body, mind, and spirit, a practice that serves me well as an artist seeking balance in all of life’s offerings. By staying in the moment with the soul-searching, meditative, curious inner dialog inherent to the creative process, I am able to achieve the vision I seek. When I paint, I listen for and attend to the sensation of a sound lying somewhere within the surface of my work. I visualize this auditory experience through the colors, lines, and shapes that are a part of my artistic language. Each sound produces an opportunity to ignore or to make visible a potential image. My decisions are made with both spontaneity and deliberateness. A vibrating mark, perhaps a trill in disguise, is nurtured through the placement of personal and archetypal symbols. Intentional dots, random scribbles, and various line combinations work together to provide the rhythm and repetition that I seek. By layering multiple thin washes of acrylic color, I hear into visual existence an inner and outer symphony of movement, stillness, and sound. Key to this somewhat orchestral experience is a desire for compositional balance. My meditative paintings are interwoven melodies emanating from the harmony and discord found in art and life.” Pat Mattina will give a gallery talk on Saturday, July 19th at 11:30 AM entitled “Moving with the Shadow; Hearing the Light.”

These intriguing and personal images will be on view from July 18th through July 30th.
The Opening Reception will be held on Friday, July 18th at 7:00 p.m.