BEACON, NY.- Matteawan Gallery presents a solo exhibition of recent paintings and drawings by Ky Anderson. This is Anderson’s first exhibition at the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, September 9 from 6-9 pm and the show runs through Sunday, October 1.
Ky Anderson’s enigmatic paintings and drawings are abstract, but with subtle references to nature. She has a deft sense of color that alternates between warm yellows, pinks, and browns to cool blues, grays, and greens. Her work features strong compositions that combine solid blocks of color with lines and open space. A key feature of her process is the layering of lines and color in varying degrees of opacity. At times she lets the paint drip or splatter, adding an element of chance to the composition. Some of Anderson’s paintings are framed with painted wood frames that become part of the work and serve to complete the overall composition and color scheme.
The imagery in Anderson’s work is unusual yet vaguely familiar. Many of her works contain a central form that resembles a vessel or shield. Surrounding this central shape are strong lines of different colors that seem to support it. There are also glimpses of landscape, especially of water, sky, and mountains. In some drawings the lines seem to sprout feathers, in others there are references to the human eye. Her work is about memory and taking note of ordinary things in our daily lives. Anderson writes that her paintings are “personal narratives of layered forms, colored washes and line work that illustrate the visible and invisible connections between the weights, pulls and supports of the landscape around us.”
On a more formal level, Anderson’s work is about painting: about what happens when one puts yellow next to green, or lets paint drip, or when a wash of white paint is added over another color. She is a master of composition and restraint and knows when to leave open space, but also when to add dense color and drips of paint. She manages all of this with an incredible lightness and sense of spontaneity.
Ky Anderson exhibits throughout the US and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Kathryn Markel Fine Art and Frosch & Portmann, New York, NY; Look & Listen, Saint Chamas, France; and Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at numerous galleries and museums including the Galleries at Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Bryant St Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN; Transmitter, Brooklyn, NY; Galerie Martagon, Malaucène, France; Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, NJ; and Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY. Anderson is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Art, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, and Zeitgeist. She holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. Anderson was born in Kansas City, MO and lives in New York.
