Join us from 5-7pm for Mill Valley First Tuesday Art Walk artist reception featuring our July artist Sharon Paster in the Theatre Gallery and Robbie Sugg’s work in the Crescendo Gallery.
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Robbie Sugg, “Past Present”
My artistic process is a response to my present location. Starting with the artifacts and surfaces of the place in which I reside, I construct images that visualize the accretive effect of a place being lived in. I am most drawn to the intersection of painting and print media, two antiquated mediums that, despite their supposed obsolescence, continue to be utilized indefinitely.
My vocabulary manifests as a mélange of forms: incidental marks, surfaces, street grids, landscapes, architectures, photography, signage, and detritus. Elements are built up, covered, scraped down, shifted, and reworked according to their own changing logic and circumstances. Upon first view, incidental scuffs, cracks, and markings in the urban surface could be found practically anywhere, yet they serve as a fingerprint of a particular place in time. I am interested in how ordinary minutiae mark the passage of time and people, and how they speak to what is forgotten or left behind in our social consciousness. The detritus manifested by a place is a microcosm of that place; they are symbols of their own becoming, and of their own deterioration. The images straddle the boundary between the abstract and the recognizable, the intentional and the unintentional, what is preserved and what is lost.
Featured artwork (left):
Tierra Adentro (triptych detail)
Screen print and bleach on paper
17-13/16″ H x 14-1/16″ W (one panel of three)
2017
Sharon Paster, “Outside In”
Sharon Paster is inspired by the coastal landscape surrounding her in Northern California and Baja, Mexico. She layers oil colors, plays with space, and contrasts the solid with the ephemeral, the fixed with the fluid, to explore the forces of nature continuously at work. The surfaces of her contemporary abstract paintings are often calm, but the tension is ever-present. Everything pulsates with life, on the verge of movement and change.
Sharon has been exhibiting work in Northern California since 2002, participating in numerous group and solo shows—including the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Recent publications include American Artwork, Art of Northern California and the Serena & Lily Catalog.
She shares a studio at the Industrial Center Building in Sausalito, CA, with noted Bay Area artist Katy Kuhn, serves on the ICB Art Association’s Board of Directors, and is represented by Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in San Francisco, The Studio Shop Gallery in Burlingame and Jules Place in Boston.
Featured artwork (right):
Where the Ocean Meets the Sand, oil on canvas, 60″ x 60″
