June 3- 26, 2010

THE LAURA RUSSO GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT:


Gregory Grenon: Native Outsiders - New Work

Francis Celentano : New Paintings

OPENING RECEPTION:
First Thursday June 3, 2010
First Thursday Hours, 5-8pm

Please join us for an artist talk with Gregory Grenon, Saturday, June 12, at 11a.m.

Gregory Grenon



Gregory Grenon
Where is Gertrude? 2010
oil on glass and colored glass
44 " x 29.5"

We are pleased to present “Native Outsiders,” an exhibition of new paintings by Gregory Grenon, one of the most recognized artists in the Northwest. Grenon continues his work as a colorist exploring the dynamic and expressive qualities of the people he paints. His approach is incredibly honest. His portrait-like images, frequently of women in a range of expressive moments, are strong, haunting and frank. They engage the viewer with their outward glances. The rawness with which he chooses to lay down his compositions results in an intriguing range of characters, revealing thoughts, internal rhythms and emotional content. Grenon combines contemporary subject matter with a highly developed and energetic color palette. He paints directly on the reverse side of glass, a technique he discovered on his own, but which is also steeped in Russian folk tradition. These striking paintings continue Grenon’s passionate and evocative use of line and color.

Gregory Grenon grew up in Detroit where he studied at the Center for Creative Studies. After a stint in Chicago, where he furthered his printmaking skills at Landfall Press, he moved to the Pacific Northwest. Throughout his career, he has had one-person exhibitions throughout the region as well as in New York, Chicago, Boston and New Orleans. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Oregon Arts Commission. His work is in numerous private and public collections including the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, OR; the Portland Art Museum; the Seattle Art Museum; the Tacoma Art Museum; the Boise Art Museum; and New York Public Library. Grenon recently completed a series of lithographic prints with Mahaffey Fine Art. Currently, his work is also featured in exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum and The Montreal Museum of Fire Arts.

More examples by Gregory Grenon

Francis Celentano


Francis Celentano
Diamond Oblique in Blue and Green 2010
acrylic on canvas
50.5" x 50.5"

This new exhibition of paintings by Francis Celentano presents mesmerizing images that further cement his position in the history of and resurgent interest in Op Art. In this show, Celentano’s acrylic paintings explore shapes that move around a center point in a variety of ways, including displacement, rotation and radiation. Painting with black and white or a range of hard-edged colors, his works create optical illusions in space. The result is optically dramatic and visually stimulating. Celentano moved to Seattle from New York in the 1960s to become Professor of Painting at the University of Washington. It is here he began to develop his interest in color theory. Rather than using color in a traditional manner, in depicting something else, he immersed himself in its theories, developing ideas in hard edge painting and optical art. Resonance can be found between his work and that of other notable Op artists like Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely.