DONNA USHER, Contemplation
MIRIAM SINGER, Endless Day

September 5 – October 11, 2014
Artist Reception, September 6, 5 – 7 pm
First Fridays, September 5 & October 3, 6 – 8:30

LGTripp Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of recent works by Donna Usher and Miriam Singer, each in their second solo shows with the gallery and third with the gallerist.

Complex expressions require basic vocabularies. Composers need libraries of notation to craft symphonies; artists need foundational visual vocabularies to create insight. Usher and Singer both use abstraction as a means of communication and exploration, but they choose different foundational marks. Usher uses the circle and spiral to delve into the connections of the natural world, while Singer uses the square as her basic measurement for the built environment. Hanging in proximity, Usher’s paintings and Singer’s drawings provide a dynamic and balanced perspective on the natural and constructed environments.

The large acrylic panels that make up Donna Usher’s Contemplation series beckon the viewer to be still and immersed in fluid washes of brilliant colors and swirling clouds of orbs. Inspired by the fundamental shapes that order the universe, connecting it across levels of scale, Usher utilizes spirals that evoke both nebulae and nautili, circles that elicit atoms or planetary bodies, and luscious amorphous color fields that recall both water and sky.

In the drawings that comprise her Endless Day series, Miriam Singer uses dense stacks of shape, color and pattern to construct highly playful, cacophonous depictions of a city that is both familiar and imaginary. Her process is intrinsically linked to her own explorations of Philadelphia.