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Seager Gray Gallery

July 3 - August 1, 2013

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  • (415) 384-8288

108 Throckmorton Ave Mill Valley, CA 94941
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Cadenza Leslie Allen, My Sausalito, oil/canvas/panel, 48 x 48 Seager Gray Gallery
Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley presents Cadenza, a solo exhibition of paintings by Leslie Allen. The exhibition runs from July 2 – July 31. There will be a reception for the artist on Friday, July 12 from 6 to 8 PM. The exhibition will be accompanied by a full color catalog. As a part of the Mill Valley Artwalk, there will be a special preview of the exhibition with music by Michael Fecskes, cellist Tuesday, July 9 from 5 to 8 PM. Nearly 30 years ago, Leslie Allen leased her first studio in Sausalito overlooking the water. She had come to Northern California to raise her young daughter and brought with her a fierce determination and a work ethic that would not be suppressed. “It is true that I seem to paint as though my feet are on fire,” she says, “mostly because I have no idea when I approach a canvas what’s going to happen or how I will face the challenge of blankness or marks already there, and also because my available time to paint is too limited.” Her exhibition, Cadenza celebrates these thirty years with a body of work that is a triumph of classical modernism, channeling with new vitality the spirit of her greatest influences, Richard Diebenkorn and Henri Matisse. Looking at her paintings, My Sausalito, I and II, one can’t help but think of Diebenkorn working from Sausalito some 66 years earlier looking at the same view of the bay harbor and the same light when he had a studio there from 1947 to the end of 1949. Diebenkorn, for his part brought his own imaginings of Matisse in Collioure, the fishing village on the Mediterranean where he did some of his most important work. In these paintings, Allen has managed to utilize the Matisse-like use of pattern, flat shapes and high contrast while incorporating Diebenkorn’s keenly developed sense of structure and proportion. Her use of plumb lines to break up and ground more patterns
in the vivid blue space orchestrates the experience for the viewer into a slide show of the myriad shapes, colors and contrasts that daily enchant her in the view from her studio window. Other paintings, Arpeggio and RD are reminiscent of Diebenkorn’s Berkeley series, particularly Berkeley #57. The chromatic mastery of color, the ochres, ambers, reds and blues are skillfully executed in both and the palettes resonate. In Arpeggio, the division of space is more clearly delineated and black linear patterns mimic piano keys. Allen began playing the cello at an early age and after a long hiatus she has recently resumed
a practice of playing every day with the same steady determination applied to painting. She and artist/architect husband, Barry Peterson share a sophisticated appreciation for music and she credits him for being her “DJ” in his selections of music for their nightly art making hours. Looking at this body of work, it is easy to imagine Allen “seeing” with a soundtrack, carefully choosing a musical sequence that informs the rhythm of each painting. In Every Single One the shape of another stringed instrument, a guitar perhaps, hovers in the upper left corner of the work, suggesting an acoustic background to the watery abstract vista, buzzing with nighttime activity. Seager Gray Gallery 23 Sunnyside Ave Mill Valley, CA 94941
Cadenza Leslie Allen, For Pink, oil/canvas/panel, 35 x 36 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, The Kiss, oil/canvas/panel, 36 x 35 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, Winter Ivory, oil/canvas/panel, 36 x 35 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, Arpeggio, oil/canvas/panel, 48 x 48 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, Loop the Desert, oil/canvas/panel, 40 x 40 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, Rain Glory, oil/canvas/panel, 35 x 36 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, My Sausalito II, oil/canvas/panel, 48 x 36 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, A Grand Day Out for S & P, oil/canvas/panel, 48 x 48 Seager Gray Gallery
Cadenza Leslie Allen, Loop the Ocean, oil/canvas/panel, 40 x 40 Seager Gray Gallery