Sculptor Gwen Marcus and Island painter Sean Roach have teamed up for a new show at the Louisa Gould Gallery called Light & Form.
Internationally known sculptor Gwen Marcus, whose works in bronze are held in museums as far afield as Taiwan, is back with her third summer exhibition at Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven.
A team-up with Island painter Sean Roach, the show — called Light & Form — pairs Ms. Marcus’s figurative bronzes with Mr. Roach’s dynamic, sun-flooded images of breaking waves.
An opening reception took place last weekend and the show continues through August 6.
The show’s centerpiece is The Bather, a life-sized nude by Ms. Marcus that shows her command of the human form as well as the applied patience it took to achieve the piece’s rich patina. Poised on a rock, one leg outstretched toes-first to test the waters, her figure embodies the concentrated stillness that comes before a plunge.
The statue was cast just this year at a New York foundry and is part of a strictly limited series, Ms. Marcus said.
Gwen Marcus beside her sculpture, The Bather.
Gwen Marcus beside her sculpture, The Bather.
“It’s an edition of 12, and this is number nine,” she told the Gazette.
Earlier castings of The Bather are in private collections and public institutions including Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina and the Chimei Museum in Taiwan, she said.
Ms. Marcus also is showing a host of smaller bronzes, all captured from life. Most are women or children, but she’s also sculpted her dog, Jake, as a puppy.
Like The Bather, each of the smaller works catches a point in time — the stretch and yawn of an early riser, a child wrapped in a beach towel, a dancer abandoning herself to the rhythm of a song — and preserves the ephemeral moment in bronze.
Formerly from New York, Ms. Marcus is now based on Cape Cod and represented by Louisa Gould Gallery. This is her third annual show at the gallery.
Mr. Roach’s paintings also preserve fleeting moments: the interplay of water and light in waves breaking on Island shores.
Working from photographs he’s taken at South Beach, Squibnocket and other Island beaches, Mr. Roach chooses his favorite elements from each to create a specific image.
“I’ve got a photo where I see the light come through this way, or I see a kind of misty cloud that’s right behind the wave [and] I’ll just kind of piece all that together,” he said.
Once he has the idea in mind, Mr. Roach first sketches his idealized wave in acrylic paint.
“Then I’ll come back with oil [paint], and things will really start to change and get textural,” he said.
Surging with energy from the foamy foreground to the peaking breaker, all beneath gleaming, often dramatic Island skies, Mr. Roach’s wave paintings are a significant departure from his earlier work, which — much like Ms. Marcus’s — centered on human subjects.
“I used to paint a lot of portraits and people and social commentary paintings, and then the... political climate of the world just made humans so disappointing to me,” he said. “I don’t want to be thinking about all that human [bs] when I’m in the studio. This is me, celebrating my appreciation of the universe.”
Light & Form remains on display at Louisa Gould Gallery through August 6.
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