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Group Exhibit Features Encaustic, Acrylic, Mixed Media Paintings at Reynolds Fine Art

Reynolds Fine Art, 96 Orange Street, New Haven, will present paintings by Binnie Birstein, Mike Childs, and Linda Colletta in a group exhibition opening Friday, March 3. The exhibition will feature abstract paintings in encaustic, acrylic, and mixed media. Each artist uses abstraction as a vehicle to explore visual tensions through use of color, line, and form.

Binnie Birstein’s use of off-angles and layered medium create feelings of dissonance between real and imagined space, Mike Childs’s disharmonious color juxtapositions and disjointed patterns create feelings of opposing spaces, and Linda Colletta’s exploration of line against a form reflect the places where rural serenity and urban decay meet.

“My work is about energy and spatial ambiguity. Playing with analogies and double entendre, I create a distorted mix of reality, imagination, and space. Although my paintings may incorporate a geometric framework, expressiveness becomes the ultimate driver of the compositions, one mark or layer leading to another and creating the sensations of movement, progression and dissonance,” says Birstein.

Childs says, “My recent paintings employ an abstract language of patterns, symbols, and structural references based upon preliminary photographs and sketches. The images exhibit disharmonious colors, disjointed patterns, and off-kilter organic elements, which can suggest opposing spaces. This kind of dissected urban visual reference is the main theme within my work. Abstraction, I believe, can be a reckoning with the constantly changing environment, allowing one to reflect on how we negotiate a chosen space bound by our culturally dictated perspective.”

Colletta says she grew up in a very small rural town, then spent 16 years in New York City while studying and working in the arts.

“This background caused me to be deeply influenced by beauty and serenity of the natural world and by the grunge and decay of the urban city all at the same time. I express this through layering, washes, drips, scribbles and textures. I am endlessly fascinated by places where man and nature meet, like a telephone line across the sky, or a tiny patch of grass in the middle of a cement jungle, or a fence marking the end of a rolling field. The line against the form is not only a source of beautiful abstraction, but also speaks to our futile attempts as humans to contain or control our world,” she says.

On Friday, March 3 there will be an artist reception to be held in the gallery from 5 to 8 p.m. The opening reception and general gallery admittance is free and open to the public. This exhibition will be on view through Saturday, April 29.

For more information, visit www.reynoldsfineart.com, call 203-498-2200, or email info@reynoldsfineart.com.