Alex C Moore’s work leaves something to the imagination. A rarity in a world in which visual language often seems to become ever less subtle over time, Moore’s uncomplicated compositions speak to viewers in a pleasantly colloquial tone. They are at once inviting and mysterious, with a pitch perfect mixture of maturity, grace and humility. Her sometimes disorienting paintings isolate passages of disembodied figures, elevating small gestures and minute detail to a plane of autonomous importance. Though her approach is smart and agilely conceptual there is nothing flashy about the work, and each pieces resonates with a humble intelligence. Colorful mittens perched implausibly in midair on their expressively posed, yet barely alluded to, hands manage to convey a wide range of emotions. Their positioning could just as easily read as joyful surprise or alarmed defense. Without the whole of the figure to fill in the narrative gaps, Moore’s singular abstractions work as a sort of Rorschach test, gently reflecting the immediate emotional state of the viewer.

Moore, who spent the first 14 years of her life outside London before moving to Seattle, did her undergrad at Wesleyan University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2005. This year she will earned her MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Her education has obviously done her well. She paints with a self assuredness that speaks to her experience and knowledge. Her palette is bright and compact, with the dreamy intensity of late afternoon light. Her suggestively worked passages of oil paint stand out on the raw canvas she chooses to paint on, like fresh tattoo ink on abraded flesh; provocative and painfully exciting. The artist write of this technique, “The interplay between the raw canvas and the thick fleshy oil paint blurs the boundary between surfaces and thus between figure and external influences.” Likewise the work is infused with a play between introverted and extroverted energy. While there is obviously something very intimate about each piece and the quiet scenes that they capture, there is also a tangible sense of wanting to share and relate to the world in which each scene plays out.

Recently Moore’s work was featured in the GLAMFA group show (Greater Los Angeles Master of Fine Arts) curated by a group of MFA students at California State University Long Beach. She recently moved to Los Angeles and got a studio. Expect big things from this budding talent.

London Miles Gallery is one of the UK’s leading contemporary art galleries. Specializing in surrealist, pop, lowbrow and illustration, the gallery prides itself on unearthing and nurturing new emerging talent. London Miles, in the city’s arts rich West London, has been open since April 2009 and staging impressive solo and group shows since their inception, including July’s Thinkspace curated “The Next Generation” exhibit that featured a veritable who’s who of contemporary art.

Opening this Friday, September 10th, London Miles has put together yet another compelling group show, this time focused on artists from their homeland. “Made in Britain” will feature work from some of the UK’s hottest young talents. Each artist has created a 24″x24″ piece in their own style reflecting on something uniquely British. Artists were encouraged to draw upon “a British tradition, iconic figure or historical memory of theirs.” London Miles has done a good job with their roster, including an interesting blend of styles and techniques. Featured artists include realist figurative painter Paul Sontag, street artists Inkie and Ink Fetish, and mixed media artists like Ben Jensen and Maddy Sargent.

Opening reception will be held at London Miles’ Westbourne Studios location from 7-11 PM. While there be sure to check out their concurrently opening exhibition “Visual Splendor” a solo show from UK pattern artist David Marsh aka Mesh 137, whose vibrant street art led him indoors to a growing gallery career.

London Miles Gallery
Westbourne Studios. 242 Acklam road.
Unit 303. London. W10 5JJ
info@londonmiles.com
phone: (44) 020 3170 8618

Alexander Salazar Fine Art is well known for their well rounded list of contemporary and modern art. And with pieces by artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg, on their roster the San Diego hot spot has nothing to prove. But from September 2-6, Alexander Salazar is bringing you 5,000 square feet showing 85 local talents which include some of the biggest names in the west coast including Allison Rash, Chor Boogie, Dan Camp, Justin Bower, Mear One, Palo Uber, Pose2, and many more in a range of styles from abstract expressionist to surrealist to street art.

Be sure to check the beautiful portraits of featured artist Justin Bower. Justin shares part of his process for his morphing portraits; “In this series of paintings I use an anonymous image culled from the internet, re-interpreting the image in every painting. The multiplicity and endless variation of this image confuses an authentic origin, reaffirming the tension between the digital image and a real world counterpoint.”

The five dollar entree fee gets you five days of access to the fair. But more importantly, 100% of the proceeds from entrance get donated to “It’s All About the Kid’s” charity. For those of us who are too far to join the fun, check out the website below.

EASEL: San Diego Art Fair
www.alexandersalazarfineart.com
1040 7th Avenue

When I was a kid my grandma used to have a turn of phrase that I still love and use often: “God doesn’t give with both hands.” More often than not she would use this to describe pretty people who weren’t very bright, muttered conspiratorially under her breath with a teasing elbow to the ribs. Despite my decidedly agnostic nature I love this little colloquialism and find myself repeating it often. “He’s really nice, but he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” my friend tells me. God doesn’t give with both hands. “I love being back in school, but I don’t have enough free time!” God doesn’t give with both hands. “This burrito is filling, but not very delicious…” God doesn’t give with both hands. And then on rare occasions, this simply isn’t true. He’s a great dancer and he volunteers at a soup kitchen on the weekends. This burrito is delicious and filling. The artwork of Alicia Escott is a perfect example of both hands giving generously. Too often artists sacrifice technique in the pursuit of high concept, or vice versa. Escott’s work is smart and markedly original on a conceptual level and exquisitely executed with masterful technique.

Escott is a San Francisco based artist, curator and environmental activist. She did her undergrad at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and earned her MFA at California College of the Arts. Her work focuses on a recurrent theme of loss, on a personal level as well as a societal level. Much of the loss that Escott deals with is ecological: endangered species, loss of habitat, and lost battles against the ever encroaching threat of environmental devastation. She uses beautifully rendered paintings and drawings to communicate a sense of urgency about the state of the planet. Her work is intelligent, touching and at times deeply humorous, without trying too hard. Take for example the drawings she did using National Geographic articles about conservation from the 70s and 80s as source material. Escott redrew imagery from the texts tromploi el on biodegradable plastic bags to signify the lack of progress made in conservation in the past few decades. Like the efforts and ideals of past environmentalists, whose attempts at ecological redemption have sadly been eroded by the swelling tide of consumerism and short term thinking, these drawings will quickly disintegrate.

I was fortunate enough to stumble on Alicia’s work at her show at Portland’s SEA Change Gallery, which is a must see gallery for me on First Thursdays. Last month the gallery hosted her exhibit Last night, again, you were in my dreams…. a collection of conceptual paintings and installations. In the series Escott painted animals on plastic sheeting, which she installed in the gallery filled with lifelike volume, and often accompanied by photographs of the painted animals in their “natural environment.” Though the work was obviously meant to be both critical and conscientious, the absurdity of it often caused me to laugh out loud, an element of levity that served the work well, as it was overall quite sad to see the majestic animals juxtaposed with quotes about species loss. One of my favorite pieces was a highly detailed painting of a pelican done on a Barney’s New York bag. The title of the piece sums it up quite well: Drawing of a California Brown Pelican on a Barneys plastic garment bag. The California Brown Pelicans currently being considered for removal from the Endangered Species Act after thirty years of protection allowed populations to rebound. This is a documentation of the drawn bird’s reintroduction into its natural habitat after having achieved couture status via Barneys New York.

Alicia Escott is certainly one to watch. An almost implausible blend of intelligence, wit, vision and candor, her talent and dedication to her practice only seem to be growing. In a recent undertaking, while living at an artist residency where leakage caused her windows to be covered in plastic, Escott endeavored to paint the plastic sheeting with a composition of what the view would look like from the nearby Bishop Pine Preserve if the house were not there. With enviable painting technique, and an expansive, forward thinking imagination, Alicia Escott is a talent on the rise.

Lisa Kowalski’s love of painting is evident the moment you set eyes on one of her dynamic, succinct compositions. Reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism at it’s best, Kowalski seems to share her own intimate dialect with color and line. Her work has a startling honesty to it. The viewer has an immediate emotional response that leaves an indelible impression. They remind me of the livid purple bruises that appear on the inside of your eyelids when you look directly into the sun: vibrant but elusive, hard to define. I recall that while studying art history I struggled to learn the language of abstract painting. It was difficult for me talk about work that possessed no easily recognizable visual symbols. For me they often read like sheet music without notes. It was only the work that achieved that illusory symbiosis between simplicity and abandon that I felt any connection to. The kind of work that was purely sensory, like Mark Rothko; a raw feeling on canvas. Kowalski’s paintings possess this kind of balance. They are simple without being empty; elegant and sparing.

In her statement Kowalski writes, “I am in love with the eloquence of sparseness and everything to do with the act of painting: the smell, the lushness of oil paint, color.” Her technique is spontaneous and unmitigated. Inspiration “gets channeled and flows from brain to arm, hitting white board with that first wonderful stroke of vibrant color, and continues with adding and subtracting, stripping down to the most essential.” Her new body of work, “Into the Brilliance,” consists of large and small scale wet-on-wet oil paintings. The show will be opening Thursday, September 2nd at Portland’s Half/Dozen Gallery.

Lisa Kowalski currently lives and works in Denver, CO. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL in 1988. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally including the Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago, IL; Aqua Art Fair, Miami, Fl; Bridge Art Fair, London, UK; Square 101 Gallery, Denver, CO; NavtaSchulz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Half/Dozen Gallery, Portland, OR; Lafontsee Galleries, Grand Rapids, MI.

Half/Dozen is located in the Everett Station Galleries.
625 NW Everett St, #111, Portland, OR 97209