TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh Margo Spoerri’s oil painting, “Pomegranate,” will be on display with her series of arboreal paintings throughout the summer at her studio in Narrowsburg. (Click for larger image)

Spoerri flourishes with ‘Trees’

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

NARROWSBURG, NY — At the Margo Spoerri Studio, new oil paintings by the artist capture river valley trees in scenes that will continue to please those already acquainted with Spoerri’s vibrant natural landscapes.

Almost all of the paintings were finished over the last two years. During the previous winter, many were on the easel situated above a heavily laden glass pallet where Spoerri mixes colors that become details sometimes overlooked during momentary glances at life along the Delaware River.

Landscape paintings can often create dramatic, albeit nonverbal events as viewers experience a feeling of moving through a depicted setting. Spoerri’s enchanted fields of vision and bright impressions of nature deliver the clearest of invitations to imagine, for example, walking through the tangled grass of “River Grasses” or leaning against the trunk of a pomegranate tree.

In effect, she bypasses the initial phase when a viewer normally searches for confidence to understand what is happening in a painting.

Spoerri works mostly with oil on wood, though “River Grasses,” on canvas, provides a good example of her process of painterly editing.

“I push paint and remove paint as well as apply paint,” she said. The subtractive process allows her to make use of the canvas texture in such images as tall grass blades. As she removes paint, she builds details, moving closer to descriptive images that show her understanding of the disheveled and ungroomed beauty of the natural world.

“I would like to think that on some level, it gets through that the visual environment that we live in is to be regarded with sanctity,” Spoerri said.

When I look, the reverence is immediate.

Peter English of Grandstyle Framing in Honesdale, PA constructed and fit all of the frames for Spoerri’s paintings, and he produced the Giclee prints—high resolution digital scans printed with archival quality inks—which Spoerri has made available at her 44 Main Street gallery.