INSIDE/OUTSIDE

Featuring:

INSIDE/OUTSIDE

featuring: Heather Barros and Larry Mitnick
This show runs from April 6, 2023 until April 30, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 15, 1-4 pm

Inside/Outside

Painters Larry Mitnick and Heather Barros each approach the notion of "Outside-Inside" from their particular vantage, yet one finds common ground in their show. Mitnick's work is clearly more formal and abstract, while Barros' work bends to the figurative.

These artworks present the viewer with shape and color. Mitnick's paintings are exclusively geometric. He invents shapes and forms to create his own landscapes. Barros' oils and pastels allude to corresponding shapes and colors in the landscape. Within her urban scenes, we find squares and triangles ready to be abstracted - if we choose to see them that way. While viewers may never divine Mitnick's specific inspiration, there is a structure in each of his compositions. Fragments of his thinking become visible once our eyes discover the link between any two elements.

Other of Barros' landscapes are more organic. A sandy country road leads to a stand of trees. Light leads to darkness. Color delineates form and space. And here, despite his straight-edge precision, Mitnick echoes Barros. His trapezoidal shapes also suggest light leading to dark, but in a layered way. One senses depth in the separation of Mitnick's layers, as one senses depth in Barros' receding country road. But in Mitnick's work, the ordering of layers, our perception of which are near and which are far, can have multiple interpretations.

Heather Barros ventures into the outside world, while Larry Mitnick ventures within. Art is a portal that connects the two worlds. There is beauty to be found, whether one is inside looking out or outside looking in.