By ANNEMARIE SCHUETZ
BARRYVILLE, NY — “I’ve spent 40 years between the East Village in Manhattan and Sullivan County, showing my images,” said artist June Moss.
She’s obviously been collecting images too, and an exhibition of her work, which will open with a reception on Saturday, April 22 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Nonneta and Friends Creative gallery, reflects her life in worlds urban and rural.
“We are very lucky and privileged to have June Moss in our community,” said Nonna Hall, owner of the gallery. “She’s a unique artist whose work has been shown across the nation and around the world.”
Moss has been shown in galleries and museums in the U.S., Europe and Mexico. The work shimmers with color and embraces the body at its most human—all its shapes, the way it moves, awkward or graceful, as poetry in motion or something more grounded.
“I don’t have a preconceived idea of how I expect a viewer to respond,” Moss said in an email, “just a hope that they will be engaged and interested and keep looking.”
“The first thing you’ll see are the very attractive colors—they’re deep and bright most of the time,” said Hall. “Then, you’ll be drawn deeply in by images that seem almost animated—and that might wickedly stun you with the subject matter.”
Or make you smile, like the 4-H member embracing her pig.
“The work in the show is figurative, but not realistic,” Moss wrote. It includes oil paintings and drawings and monoprints on wood, canvas, paper and on papered aluminum.
Moss uses “additive and subtractive methods to achieve their surfaces,” she wrote. “The gestures described suggest function, relationship and allegory” to embody, and maybe shape, experience. “They are odes to existence.”
The idea of paint as words, a substitute for a spoken or written story, comes up.
“My first impression about June,” Hall said, was that “she doesn’t really talk much about her work. However, when you look at any of her pieces, you can see that her work speaks for itself, and describes June’s vision of the world and her views on our society.”
“I do hope that my partnership with paint is evident, because regardless of the subject, the manipulation of the formal elements of the picture is what winds up telling the story,” Moss wrote.
And it does. When you’re finished admiring the use of form and color, “looking deeply through the subject,” Hall said, “you’ll see the story. You will follow the conversation that the artist opens for you.”
It is “truly an amazing journey to look through her work,” Hall said. “And I’m so happy that June’s unique and philosophical work will be presented at my gallery for our community.”
The exhibition of June Moss’ work will be on display at Nonneta and Friends Creative until Sunday, May 14.
The gallery is located at 16 Old Brook Rd.
To learn more, visit www.nonnetaandfriends.com.
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