Lynette Lombard’s show at Bowery Gallery, In Awe: Late Work 2022-23, runs from November 26 until December 28, 2024. Rather than writing a post filled with my own perceptions and thoughts on her work, I decided to give the floor to those who knew her much better than me, and I asked them to simply say a few words about her work and their friendship with her. Before I share the touching words that her friends and colleagues wrote, I begin by sharing her artist statement from her page on the Midwest Paint Group website, in order to first take a moment to reflect on her motivation as an artist:

Janet Niewald: Near the Woods opens on July 9. A translation of her own name in English, Nie / Wald, means “near the woods,” and in her correspondence with me, she joked that the show is a vanitas of sorts, perhaps. The show consists of landscapes, still lifes, self portraits, some that seem to focus on the structural components of the subject, while others are much more metaphorical. Regardless of what she’s painting, she is employing exciting contrasts, bold colors, deep shadows, strong structure, and patterns and repetition that unify the show.

What is it that makes a landscape a landscape, a still life a still life, and an interior an interior? How are these kinds of paintings defined? By the kinds of objects in them? By the kind of atmosphere? By the expansiveness of the space? For John Lee, whose work is currently on view at Bowery Gallery, it is both all and none of these things.

There is a quiet, contemplative narrative in Janet Gorzegno’s most recent show at Bowery Gallery. The collection contains small, intimate works, from 3 inch squares to 18 x 9 inch rectangles, and are presented in singular and tryptic formats. In each piece, a profile of a head, with eyes open and mouth closed, is gazing outward, while a complex geometric system exists within. The head appears to be a vessel for consciousness.

Bowery Gallery presents the recent work of Monica Bernier in a series of paintings of New York City that are all deeply engaged with architectural space and color. Largely they look at the artist’s native home and are all keenly aware of the structures that surround us in that environment. Often the compositions are conceived of from vantage points on elevated structures like the Metro North platform in Harlem or from Bernier’s eighth floor studio window.

With an opening reception on March 28th, the Bowery Gallery is pleased to present the latest evolution of painted, shaped, and layered panels by Esme´ Thompson. Grouped in lively rapport on gallery walls, the exhibition is a thoughtfully choreographed dance of color and design. Surprising intersections and overlaps intrigue the eye from afar, while varying surfaces invite closer inspection. From any distance and at any scale, Thompson’s alchemy of design, pattern, and color reveals itself like layers of treasure, animated throughout by energy and invention.

Bowery Gallery presents the recent work of Simon Carr Feb 27-March 22, with an opening reception Saturday March 2 from 3-6.

The exhibition features a series of children playing, outdoors, in a park near the artist’s home.

Bowery Gallery is pleased to present recent work by Thaddeus Radell, whose darkly luminous paintings evoke journeys through landscapes of the subconscious. From the artist’s richly layered surfaces—broadly troweled in places, elsewhere delicately incise emerge visions of figures that appear and disappear within atmospheric depths. Bits of embedded burlap suggest a ragged dimension beyond paint. The heavy impasto, set against thinly brushed lines of saturated earth colors, creates living, breathing surfaces.

John Goodrich’s twelfth exhibition at Bowery includes forty recent landscapes, figure paintings and still lifes, all animated by heightened color and incisive brushwork. The paintings reveal how colors and forms can be more than merely descriptive; they can also engage a kind of elemental expression unique to painting.

The Bowery Gallery presents “Recent Paintings” by Younghee Choi Martin: a modern take on Aeschylus's Oresteia Trilogy. Through a massive play of shape and color, these highly worked surfaces address both the density and the fresh, lyric expressiveness of the ancient dramas to reveal a contemporary vision. There is a reductive, modernist integration of the figurative and landscape elements in these works. Through the continual development of the paint, the surface, the composition, and the texture, the narrative is never lost. It breathes through the layers to slowly release a pictorial structure and a lyric dimension.

Combining painting, photography and dance in an installation that emphasizes the immediacy of visual experience, Hearne Pardee extends his involvement with everyday spaces in an exhibition of new work at the Bowery Gallery.

Bowery Gallery is pleased to present the urban cityscapes of Michael Louis Johnson and Tony Serio. Johnson and Serio’s paintings explore upper Manhattan, through incidental views from a window or dense groups of trees in Hudson River Park with their undergrowth which are common themes in their work. The work reveals unexpected relationships as observations of natural and man-made forms as they are translated to the flat surface. The calm sense of place that belies the urgent painting process as Johnson and Serio use their work to reconsider once-familiar shapes and intervals.

The Bowery Gallery is pleased to present Rita Baragona’s recent paintings and drawings of oceans, flower-based still lives and gardens. These are highly energetic, exquisitely sensitive paintings, alive with luminous color and lyrical lines which create rhythmic spatial movement.

Bowery Gallery is pleased to present recent paintings by David Bradford. His recent works are executed in acrylic and burlap on panel. They use a language of color/light, compressed space, scale changes, and frontality. Building from these abstract elements, they reference cities, gardens, landscapes, and objects. The paintings seek, to quote Cezanne, “A harmony that is parallel to nature”.

The Bowery Gallery is pleased to present Robert Braczyk’s recent sculpture.  These wood constructions further Mr. Braczyk’s exploration of form in space and the possibilities of what contemporary sculpture can be. In them he considers the efflorescent forces of tree growth and the structures they produce. Like their inspiration the pieces have both internal and external space and are emphatically three dimensional. They are an actualization of material as subject.