Harmonies by Gail Flanery
October 14 – November 15, 2020
440 Gallery presents Harmonies, an exhibition of mixed-media prints by veteran printmaker Gail Flanery. For this show she has included pieces that show different phases of the growth and development in her expansive career. Flanery’s signature imagery draws from nature, and much of it is suggestive of landscape—landscapes freshly imagined by Flanery—invented, inverted, re-imagined and animated by lush color and sweeping sense of space. Flanery speaks of the consistencies that have held over the years, “I consider certain color harmonies when I want to reflect a mood, or a sense of place. My work evokes the horizon. There is often a contemplative nature and and an atmospheric reference to landscape. There also is definitely an interplay with representation and abstraction.”
Flanery is a graduate of Cooper Union where she began composing with color fields when as a student there. You can see this method used in the “Untitled Work” dated 1971. In more recent work on paper she repurposes older art, by cutting or tearing it, using collage techniques. This practice is apparent in the piece, “Ocean”.
Flanery’s primary medium has long been printmaking. The piece “Distant Desire”, with moody grays and reds, anchored by a triangular shape, is a monotype print created in the shop of Master-printer Kathy Caraccio.
Flanery’s work is in dozens of private and corporate collections, and is in the permanent collection of the Zimmerli Art Museum. Flanery has exhibited extensively, and press credits include The New York Times.
Harmonies opens on October 14 at 440 Gallery, 440 Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn, and runs through Sunday, November 15, 2020.
The 440 Gallery is in Park Slope, convenient to the F, G, and R. The gallery is open Wednesday through Friday, 4–7pm, Saturday and Sunday, 11am–7pm, or by appointment. Check the gallery's website here for events and more information.