Sylvan Gallery Celebrates the Season's Small Pleasures

There are few things I love more than reveling in stolen moments of pure solitude. As I type, the sun is just pinking the sky, steam from my bunny mug is flavoring the air, flames are licking at a crackling log, and the window casing is framing the dancing snow as it's blown from the neighbor's pines. Now I sense with glee what I was bemoaning just eight short hours ago: The New England holiday season has officially arrived.

Others have had that festive spirit far longer than I. One such spot, Sylvan Gallery, opened its holiday show Small Pleasures weeks ago. The vibrant red and golden gallery spaces hold scores of paintings, mounted from the crown molding to the baseboards, by artists from Connecticut and greater New England.

This year's exhibit is slightly different in theme and scope than previous ones. While visitors will definitely feel the cheer, it comes from an overall, subdued impression created by warm fuzzies and a wintery nature rather than by specific indication. For example, Karen Winslow, who is known for her vibrant landscapes and faithfully rendered still lifes, normally contributes half a dozen Christmas-themed paintings. This year, only one festoons the mid-wall of the second room.

In Quality Control #6 a pointy eared elf, complete with green
tunic and red-striped Santa-
helper hat, has sidled up to a bouquet of present bows to measure and prepare decorative ribbon. Winslow manages to give this little scene a dose of a reoccurring Small Pleasures theme: soft, quiet sweetness. This is created by the fuzzy quality of her brushwork on the taupe and grey background, the serene but rosy facial rendering of the earnest worker, and the exaggerated highlights grazing his shoulders, his temple, and the tips of the ribbon.

Yellow Breasted Chat, Acorns, Antique Nutcracker, and, yes, even Onions, build on this theme of sweetness. In this series of exquisitely executed still lifes, dramatic staging of luminous details against deep backdrops maximizes the cozy subjects and compositions. In Acorns, an itsy-bitsy painting flanked by an ornate gold frame, three little capped fellows are propped up against one another. The spotlight emphasizes the contrast of the textured cupule and the smooth, silky auburn skin and casts halos of light beneath their carefully aligned positions. In Yellow Breasted Chat, the plumpest, most tooth-achingly adorable crooner perches on a nozzle, seemingly ready for his debut. His beak innocently captures a line of unraveling thread, which blazes white against the dark backdrop. The addition of a ginger oval highlights both the linear nature of the painting as it plays off of the nozzle and the overall radiance created by the theatrical treatment of the thread.

Jennifer Li's portraits contribute significantly to the warm-fuzzy feel. Her work can get lost in other shows, but here, in this exhibit, it stands out. Her process includes a combination of solar-etching prints and oil layering. Li starts by photographing one of her original paintings. She then employs sun and water to create an etched plate and uses that plate to produce prints. These black and white images are the ones that I'm drawn to (check out Girl with Rabbit Fur Muff in the kitchen area of the gallery as an example), but in many cases she continues to manipulate her original work by adding layers of oil paint to the print. Cherub-faced portraits like The Rolling Pin, Calling in the Chickens, and Aunt Ida are unassuming and border on the mundane. However, it's this capturing of the day to day happenings of yesteryear in warm shades of umber that seems all the more relevant as we transition to a season punctuated by yummy smells of non-stop baking and comforting
gatherings of family and friends.

There are the wonderful shoreline snapshots like Sky Over Green Hills, a chunky marsh painting by Deborah Quinn-Munson; Early Autumn, Hammonasset, the finely detailed and exceptionally large, award-winning painting by Al Barker (he took third prize in the 126th annual Salmagundi Show); and Vineyard Haven Harbor View, a fluid waterscape by Peter Layne Arguimbau. But it's the snowy, overcast world of Franco that gives me the holiday glow and, I might add, truly transforms this exhibit.

In Silent Night, the cold spookiness of the woods is illuminated. A full moon breaks through the tree limbs, a stone wall is coated in fluffy white, and a crescent variation of hatching brush strokes gives life and movement to the falling snow. In the midst, the focal point-one single rectangle of sunny yellow-pours out of the cabin's window. The magic is repeated in December Glow, Field of Gold, and Quiet Winter Day.

With Franco, Lusk, Li, and Winslow's works, the elements of winter, warmth, and home arrive just in time for Christmas. I've been inspired, so I'm off. Going to don my mittens and parka (with a quick stop to grab a carrot, a couple of coal-like substitutes, and a scarf). Frosty is waiting…thank goodness for small pleasures.

Leah Lopez Schmalz is an nvironmental attorney with a B.A. in industrial design and a concentration in visual art and jewelry studies. Email her at eahlopez9@yahoo.com.