Two by Land: Katherine Sandoz and Nicole Donnelly

        Nicole Donnelly’s painting style is very abstract and surreal.  She uses very organic shapes and textures to suggest unusual surreal landscapes.  In some of her paintings it appears that she begins painting the canvas upside down, and flips it at some point during her painting process to finish painting the image.  This is made apparent by drips of paint that appear to be dripping up.  This subtle feature provides an interesting effect to the physics of the painting almost making it seem like she could have been in outer space, painting landscapes that actually exhibit. 

            “The Floating World” is one of her larger paintings and definitely the most visually interesting piece in my opinion.  Donnelly depicts floating dark green bush/cloud like objects that are held down with orange nets.  These nets are tied down by a white rope that descends and disappears into the light blue water below.  The artist gives subtle hints that the blue bottom third of the painting is water by including dark lines that mirror the white lines that hold down the nets.  She also depicts distorted green masses directly under the floating green clouds creating a reflection effect.  There are also two pinkish hieroglyphic-resembling bodys that serve to add interest to the negative space behind the white lines.  These strange symbols add a mysterious element to the painting because it is unclear what they are and, they don’t have reflections in the water making them seem almost like ghosts.  These symbols do an excellent job of guiding the viewer’s gaze around the landscape from floating cloud to floating cloud, to the water and back again.  Another element that I think is interesting about this piece is the space between the top of the green cloud and the orange net.  The space between the two makes it seem as if there is an invisible form on top of the cloud that is holding up the net.

            Katherine Sandoz’s style is much more abstract, painting semi transparent wedges of color on wood panels.  Her paintings appear to be landscapes as well although with content this abstract, there is a lot open for interpretation.  Most of her paintings are extremely similar looking due to their simplicity.  The transparency of the color wedges creates an interesting effect resembling wet paper cutouts that are stacked on top of each other. 

            In her “Overpass Series” she features 9 square paintings arranged in a 3 by 3 square.  These 9 pieces exhibit differently placed and colored wedges with varying degrees of transparency.  Individually these paintings are interesting because of their watery textures and subtle depth created by the layered wedges and some sort of resin.  When you step back and look at these paintings collectively as a series, new interesting things start to emerge.  The 3 by 3 square of smaller paintings takes on a windowpane effect and it appears as if each window is a view to a different world.  At this distance only the general shapes are visible and a lot of the watery textures seem to disappear. 

            Together, I think each artists’ work compliments each other nicely. There somewhat similar abstract style ties the exhibit together while their displaying the two artist’s work side by side highlights distinct stylistic differences.  By displaying their work together it becomes second nature to the viewer to compare them, encouraging them to notice the details that make each work unique.