NEW YORK, NY.- Here and There, A Life in Landscape, an exhibition of Abstract Expressionist paintings by Stan Brodsky that underscores decades of the artist’s acute sensitivity to his physical surroundings, will open at the June Kelly Gallery at 166 Mercer Street on February 1. The work will remain on view through March 3.

Art writer Hilarie Sheets writes in the exhibition catalogue, that in the many decades Stan Brodsky has worked as a painter, he has always relied on a deeply empathetic response to his environment as a departure point—whether the underlying geometry of New York City where he lived as a young man, the atmospheric seascape in Huntington, Long Island, where he moved in 1965, or the qualities of color and light in landscapes he experienced during frequent travels over the years to places including France, Israel, Greece, Italy, New Mexico, or California.

At 92, Brodsky has curtailed roaming far from his studio and directs his process more inward. Synthesizing all he has learned from the natural and man-made world, the artist has produced some of the most gloriously chromatic and visually exciting paintings of his career.

In this exhibition canvases completed since 2015 reflect Brodsky’s direct and intuitive experimentation with color and shape, structure and movement, and the extraordinary sensuousness of his vision, writes Sheets.

In the painting, Wistful, 2015, instinctive memory of landscapes from Brodsky’s own inner nature are depicted in fragmented flat areas of color, interlocked and animated by the autonomy of his brushstrokes. In Edge of Summer, 2017, Brodsky’s orchestration of color with staggering originality; his way of threading blues and greens through and across the canvas gives visual coherence to unpredictable pictorial architecture with depth of vistas and aerial openness.

Sheets writes Brodsky relies on the memory of experiences. While working, he observes in the moment how colors react to one another, striking notes high or low, hot or cool. She says it is a kind of creative alchemy that remains exciting and mysterious to the artist. With age, Brodsky has also found out he’s not judging himself as critically, although admitted that’s the toughest thing to get out of. “I’m thinking less,” he said, “and experimenting more.”

Brodsky, a Brooklyn native, lives and works in Huntington, New York. He
received an MFA in painting from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in education from Columbia University. He is a recipient of many awards and fellowships and is a professor emeritus of art and former director of studio programs at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. Brodsky’s paintings have been shown in numerous one-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including two major retrospectives -- the Hofstra University Museum, Hempstead, New York, in 2008 and the Heckscher Museum in Huntington in 1991. His work is represented in many public and corporate collections, including the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY; The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton; Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase; Baltimore Museum of Art; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Long Island University, Brookville; Delaware University, Grey Gallery, New York University, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, Iowa University Museum and AT&T.