Image Credit: Eliot Markell, Mist at Schoodic (detail), 2011, plein air watercolor and oil pastel on paper, 9 x 11.5 inches and Jeanne Tremel, Schoodic #1 (detail), 2011, plein air watercolor on paper, 6 x 8 inches.

SILVERMAN and

The Hamilton Square Condominium Association

presents

 Shared Gaze, Uncommon Vision • Paintings by Jeanne Tremel and Eliot Markell

 January 18th, 2017 – April 30th, 2017

Opening Reception: Wednesday Jan 18, 2017, 6-8pm

Catalogue Release & Closing Brunch: Sunday April 23rd 1-7pm

Hamilton Square

232 Pavonia Avenue

Jersey City, NJ 07302

201.435.8000

SILVERMAN and The Hamilton Square Condominium Association presents “Shared Gaze, Uncommon Vision • Paintings by Jeanne Tremel and Eliot Markell,” curated by Enrico Gomez.

Artists Jeanne Tremel and Eliot Markell offer a glimpse into their respective art practices, spanning the disciplines of painting, drawing, sculpture and craft with a broad selection of paintings on canvas and works on paper in “Shared Gaze, Uncommon Vision”.

Focusing predominantly on “plein air” (in open air) works, the show also includes a collection of non-representational works, underscoring the abstraction inherent in all aspects of the observed and recorded world.

En Plein Air Painting, or the practice of painting out of doors, typically occurs in nature and includes the landscape as a subject matter. This genre of art includes paintings that are created through direct observation and enjoys a long tradition within the history of art. From the iconic swaying wheat-fields of Vincent Van Gogh to the broad vistas and epic grandeur of the Hudson River School Painters, artists have long taken their inspiration from the wild and a “hands on” or “brush-with-nature” exploration of it. Markell and Tremel are no exception.

With many years experience observing and interacting with nature, Eliot Markell offers a wide array of landscape paintings, many created on the rugged Schoodic Peninsula of coastal Maine. Home to the Acadia National Park, this area of Maine offers breathtaking intersections of rocky ledges, sweeping sky, and tumultuous sea.

The area is peppered with sleepy fishing villages and stoic inlets that have inspired many an artist including a forbear to Markell, the American modernist Marsden Hartley (whose Maine works from the lobstering village of Corea, where Tremel and Markell have also painted, will be on view at the Met Breuer Museum this coming March).

In the same way that the fishing towns and human lives seem interlaced with the natural environs in this bucolic part of the country, so too do Markell’s paintings seem fashioned partly by nature, partly by force of intention, and partly through a cooperation with the nature of his chosen materials, be they oil, canvas, watercolor or paper. There is a rough-hewn quality to these works, which is in keeping with the enigmatic tones of the Coastal Maine surround. While finished and complete unto themselves, the paintings take on the suggestions of their inspiration; jagged, atmospheric, roiling, and alive with a moving stillness. These are works that, not unlike the terrain itself, are revealed in correspondence to the viewer’s exploration of them.

For “Shared Gaze”, Jeanne Tremel offers work from both her plein air series and her abstraction series, affirming a certain breadth of her creative inquiry as well as highlighting the shared element of non-representation and translation present in both modes of working. The typical assumed viewpoint within landscape painting is centered out and away toward the horizon line; it is a universal point of human orientation, locus of intention, and marker of the visual tension between sky and earth.

Tremel subverts this vantage point slightly and casts her gaze downward toward the rocks, tide pools, and microcosmic worlds that lay just under our feet and perhaps, just below our day-to-day consideration. This subtle shift brings us into a deeper consideration of the individual components of the environment; boulders, swirls of sea grasses and patches of lichen writ in daubs of watercolor and strands of watercolor pencil on paper.

These examinations of the observed world also reveal a few of the artist’s structural art making predilections; composition, an interest in the mechanics of inter-relation, and the aesthetics of intuitive perambulations and introspection.

Veins of these qualities run throughout Tremel’s work and it might be said that while her plein air paintings suggest looking downward, her abstract works suggest looking inward, toward self or source. Like a snapshot or a blueprint of thought, these abstractions dazzle and hum with syncopated and synaptic networks of line, shape, color, and light. In jewel tones and umber sediments, Tremel’s paintings are an exemplary model of the artist in concert and conversation with her materials over time.

In these pieces, intention and will meets exploration and curiosity, “feeling” meets documentation and the work itself partners in it’s own making, unfolding, building and revealing itself along the journey.

This idea brings us full-circle back to a consideration of the plein-air pieces. While all artwork is created within a spectrum of time (a few moments to several years or longer), works that are created “out of doors” carry a host of unique additional challenges to the artist including changing light, variable and volatile environmental conditions (rain, clouds, wind) and the random inclusion or potential interruptions from on-lookers or animals or both.

The pressure of these factors on the artist to act quickly and decisively can result in a particular freshness, producing an economy of stroke and expression unique to this genre of artwork that is both practical and it’s own form of visual haiku. The works of Markell and Tremel share these qualities and other attributes as well; works that are formed yet remain open, are complete yet seemingly still evolving, determined yet flexible and exploratory.

Though not initially relevant to an understanding of each artists work, it bears mentioning that the artists, in addition to sharing visual inspirations also share an art studio and a life together as spouses. The art world has many examples of individually accomplished artists who are also couples; O’Keeffe and Stieglitz, Krasner and Pollack, Mehretu and Rankin, among others.

While Tremel and Markell each maintain their own course of rigorous inquiry, their practices and interests have overlapped and impressed upon one another over time. Like the shadow-free oak and cypress trees of Kahil Gibran’s moving treatise “On Marriage” these artists continue to grow together with ample space between each other’s practices to continue surveying and enjoying the view.

Jeanne Tremel is a visual artist who has shown her works throughout the NYC area, particularly in Brooklyn, many US cities, and in Germany. Born in Minneapolis, her formal art education began at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota (BFA) and continued in Chicago at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA). Later, at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, she earned a Certificate in Art Therapy. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Time Out New York, and featured on many art blogs, such as Left Bank Art Blog, Artefuse, Two Coats of Paint, Gallery Travels, and Mockingbird. She was recently (November, 2015) interviewed about her work for The Huffington Post. She considers herself an abstract painter at heart, switching between oil and mixed media flat work and sculptural wall & floor pieces, and installations, all made of collected materials. Jeanne has lived in Brooklyn for over 20 years.

Eliot Markell was born in Boston, Massachusetts and studied fine arts at Empire State College, SUNY and Mark Hopkins College. After studying with his mentor, Gandy Brodie at Gandy Brodie School of Fine Arts in Newfane, Vermont, Eliot then moved to Brooklyn where he has lived and made art for over 40 years, maintaining studios in Gowanus, Williamsburg and Bushwick. He has also been a presence in the arts community of Northeast Harbor, Maine having shown his plein-air work for many years at Wingspread Gallery and other Maine coast galleries. Eliot has also written art criticism and articles for his blog, White Elephant on Wheels, many appearing in Painter’s Table, a noted online daily art magazine and co-curated group shows. His artworks have appeared in numerous exhibitions in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City and other US cities.

Link to the Blurb catalogue, beautifully arranged and designed by the artists HERE

The exhibition will be on view at Hamilton Square through April 30th, 2017. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call number (201) 435-8000. Hamilton Square is located at 232 Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City, NJ.

“Shared Gaze, Uncommon Vision • Paintings by Jeanne Tremel and Eliot Markel” is the fourth exhibition that artist/curator Enrico Gomez will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the exhibiting artists please visit: for Jeanne Tremel, jeannetremel.virb.com/art and for Eliot Markell, eliotmarkell.com For additional information on the curator, please visit: enricogomez.com and thedoradoproject.com.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Debra Drexler, Mark Van Wagner, Rob Ventura, Robert Hendrickson, Sarah Becktle, Kati Vilim, Mark Dagley, Candy Le Sueur, Ed Fausty, Anna Mogilevsky, Ali Harrington, Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa, Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.

(PATH to GROVE St stop: PATH Trains from WTC, 33rd St, 23rd St, 14th St, 9th St, and Christopher St)