An Observing Eye: Artist Tom Fairs pencil drawings show

For those with an appreciation for the patience of an artful observer, an artist with a passion for drawing from nature has an exhibition of his sketchbook drawings.

My interest is primarily in things seen: landscape, interiors, still life where, in the light of the imagination, the commonplace may be transformed into the extraordinary. The ever- present transforming principle moves me. I have no theories, no special techniques and no information to communicate. I try to achieve a brief glimpse of the implicit order that lies beneath what we perceive as reality.
- Tom Fairs 

Tom Fair lived a life highly suspicious and with a complete lack of interest in showing his work. He turned down any suggestion to show his exquisite, complex pencil drawings in his lifetime. To many artists, who spent their careers working to get their work out of their studios and in front of appreciative eyes, it is inexplicable.
After his death, in 2007, Tom's sketchbooks of drawings were given to a friend, Bobbie, who appreciated and treasured them. And was determined to find a gallerist with the vision to recognize their importance.

Tom spent most of his career as a teacher, and when he retired in 1987, he devoted the last twenty years of his life to making his own art. KS ART gallery website
http://www.kerryschuss.com/cexrelease.html

"Each vividly realized scene is a fresh proposition, with its own felicitous arrangement of forms and its own set of exuberant notational marks. Fairs was an extraordinarily inventive draftsman, with a repertoire of wavering contour lines, staccato dashes and thick scribbles with which to conjure not only the city's compacted jumble of nature and culture, but the sounds of rustling leaves and far away traffic, the smells of coal smoke and grass, and even the colors of wet earth and overcast skies. Every encounter with the world generated a burst of individualized loops, squiggles, and shadings, which speak of an unselfconscious absorption in a place at the moment of its depiction and give the works a physical and emotional presence out of proportion to their scale."

Painting Party: Several friends open shows at Chelsea galleries on Friday May 7th

  At least once a week, the streets of West Chelsea in Manhattan, stretching from 29th Street down to 22nd become a street party of sorts, when galleries host openings of different exhibitions. It is the most fun for my husband and I to go together, when one (or more) of the openings involve dear friends. On a night, such as last night Friday, May 7th, when several friends had shows that opened, it is particularly exciting. And last night the buzz on the street was all about paintings.

Untitled, 2011. Oil on canvas, 96 x 80 inches

 My husband, Kerry and I had three gallery destinations last night. First up was a one-person show of the paintings of downtown New York artist, Alex Ross (David Nolan Gallery, 527 West 29th Street). We know him well, and have followed his career and seen some of his shows. His fascinating, quirky and colorful paintings have intrigued me for many years.
  For this show, the subject matter was familiar, yet the work had more of a look of landscape than I've found in the past. He talks about this in a recent HuffPost Art interview I've linked in below, "For this show I invented a colorful family of "abstract naturals," forms that are vaguely suggestive of landscape fundamentals such as coral, tree, boulder, mushroom, log, butte, and spire." I've always found Alex's process fascinating, because although the works are essentially abstract, he actually creates clay models of clay, which he then photographs and then finally paints from. Marina Cashdan, Arts and lifestyle writer for the HuffPost Arts did a piece a couple of days before the opening.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marina-cashdan/alex-ross-the-art-worlds-_b_856089.html

The opening was lively,  fun and packed with artists, friends and family of the artist. I even ran into an old friend from the East Village days, Jennifer Bolande and her husband artist Canon Hudson, in town for a show of Canon's.

We then stopped by a pop-up gallery that was doing a huge show of women abstract painters, which

Joanne Greenbaum (and Sheeba) at "A Painting Show"
with her painting on her left.

 Polly Apfellbaum's floor painting "L'A-ZP" 

   included a painting of our friend (and neighbor) Joanne Greenbaum. Her neon pink abstract piece with complex drawing and map-looking patterning really stood out in a room full of paintings of more subdued tones. The three large rooms of the Harris Lieberman space at 508 West 26th Street were full of the artists, friends, collectors and writers. It was fantastic to see so many really strong American women artists, being celebrated and acknowledged for their work in the communal venue. The buzz about the show was very good.

"Silver Donald" by Joyce Pensato (left), Joanne Greenbaum's
painting (center) and four pieces by Kristin Baker in The Painting Show.

Finally, we stopped by our main destination of the night, D'Amelio Terras gallery (525 West 22nd Street) to see a show of works on paper by Robert Moskowitz. His work was hung in the smaller gallery, with the large east wall filled with a grid hanging of rows of twenty-one black and white painted works on paper, devoted to the theme of New York.  The center piece was a minimal work with the recognizable spire of the Empire State Building. Other pieces had the top of a smokestack, and flying birds.

The artist Matt Keegan opened his show "I Love NY" in the main space with an installation of photographs taken in NYC and the two shows complimented each other very nicely. After Robert's opening the gallery directors of D'Amelio Terres kindly invited my husband Kerry and I to celebrate at a dinner at a Chelsea neighborhood restaurant. The mood at Izakaya was buoyant, the Sake flowed and their traditional Japanese pub food was very good. Oustanding dishes included the Fried Oysters, the Spicy cucumbers and the pork fried rice was one of the best friend rice dishes I've had.

Congratulations to our friends on their wonderful shows!

--Monica Forrestall