SANTA FE, NM.- The Gerald Peters Gallery announces the opening of Lines of Liminality; a two person exhibition featuring recent works by contemporary artists Susan Schwalb and Clifford Smith.

For the past thirty years, Schwalb has been working in the ancient technique of metalpoint. Metalpoint is a method of drawing in which the artist uses a piece of silver, copper, or other metal to create a design on a prepared service. As the metal passes across the surface, it leaves a slight deposit in the material used for the ground.

While most contemporary artists working in metalpoint use the ancient technique in a traditional manner, Schwalb takes an abstract approach. Concentrating on horizontal lines, built with a wide variety of metals, Schwalb is able to create subtle shifts in color and tone. The result as described by Edward Saywell (Curator, Museum of Fine Arts Boston), “…is a remarkable visual effect, one that not only reveals a highly attuned sensibility to the beauty and sensuousness of delicately defined tonalities, but which also dispels any perceived limitations of the medium itself.” Through her distinctive approach, Schwalb melds the ancient and the contemporary, using her technique to at once transcend and enhance.

Schwalb’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, among other prominent public and private collections.

A realist painter best known for his seascapes, Clifford Smith creates his works through rhythmic and abstract patterns of brushstrokes. Capturing the vastness of the sea, Smith’s compositions seem to extend past the canvas, and emphasize the immensity of his subject and its fleeting nature. In this exhibition, Smith will be showcasing four seascapes. Portraying the choppy and tumultuous ocean, these four works exemplify Smith’s technical ability and his sensitivity to the composition and structure of the canvas.

Smith received his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. His work can be found in the collections of the American Stock Exchange, New York, NY; Yale University, New haven, CT and the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH.

Lines of Liminality pursues the resolution of abstraction and representation found within the work of both artists. Smith’s collision of abstract brushstrokes which come together to form a realistic image of the sea, marks his response to these two opposing styles. Likewise, Schwalb’s repetitive use of the horizontal line abstracts her images into complete non-objectivity yet it is hard to ignore the reference and association of the horizontal line to that of the horizon line.

This exhibition marks the first exhibition of the work of both artists at the Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe.