Enlightened and Reaching For the Sky

Enlightened and Reaching For the Sky

    “If I can share the beauty and what I feel inside about it to somebody else through my art, then that’s a success.”

-Sidney Sinclair

    

  In anticipation of a new year of art making, Boerne artist Sidney Sinclair needed to define and pinpoint a thematic essence she would channel into her paintings for her “Dyad” Exhibition with fellow artist Bill Scheidt.  Known for her traditional landscapes and abstract crosses, she pondered what direction she would take and had an epiphany about merging abstraction elements into her traditional landscapes, which became one of the unifying cruxes of her current body of work.  Sinclair clarifies, 

“I want to see if I can mix them a little bit…have some abstraction within some of the representational pieces.  I’m not sure how that’s going to work out until I get in there and try, but I’ve started.”  

The abstract painting Enlightened and the landscape Reaching for the Sky are two paintings that on the surface appear different in so many ways, but they are forged in tandem with emotive elements of color and composition that are used to impart to the viewer the extraordinariness of life.           

   

  Enlightened is an abstract cross painting that is a detour from her traditional color palette that she utilized previously, which inhabited a golden realm of celestial yellows and earthy tones with hint of other rainbow hues.  This painting enraptures one in the cooler spectrum of deep tones of violet and purple and swaths of intense magenta. The off center composition of the cross has a presence, with its textural fragments dissipating into the background and creating an ethereal ambiguity.  

There are metallic accents of gold that cause the eye to travel around the picture plane,

highlighting the defragmentation of this cross as its boundaries become less defined by the textural applications.   Regarding the different approaches to execution between abstract and traditional, “The piece takes over and it evolves into its own self and so, that part, you really can’t explain.”  

    

Reaching for the Sky, a landscape oil painted in early 2015, is in a traditional, representational style that depicts a peaceful embankment of trees and a river that is gently meandering through.  In this vertically oriented landscape, the sky is the main player in the composition, its dominating presence limitless, with clouds that are loftily present in the expanse of muted blues and subtle periwinkle.  They are levitating delicately, vibrating with warm yellows and subtle accents of rose pinks.  At once, one feels kinship with this peaceful drama and is drawn into the painting.  Gazing at the clouds one begins to see and feel the similarities between the two paintings.

     Unfettered, the clouds are columns of vaporous hues that reach skyward, reflecting the glory of the hidden sun.  Within Enlightened, there is an immediacy of an emotional eternity expressed by the dynamic vivid colors that are also omnipresent in the tranquil vista of Reaching for the Sky. 

 There is a diaphanous palette that is painted in a more intuitive manner within the clouds in Sinclair’s sky.  These clouds do not reflect the light of an objective reality, but more of the ramifications of the internal psyche; this is where the intersection of the ‘old and new’ has subtly dawned.  Even though Sinclair has just begun this new era of experimentation, the core tenet remains the same, despite the genre of the piece: 

“-Any kind of art that I do, I’m going to be expressing myself, what I see and feel that just surrounds me and hope that I can impart that to someone that’s looking at it.”

      

Genuinely, Sinclair’s objective aims to communicate the shared human experience, the

embodiment of the “specialness of life” no matter what genre she is employing at the moment, and that is what unites her work in spirit.  As this journey of experimentation unfolds she is striving to bridge her two distinct styles in an attempt to forge ahead, to connect with her audience her vision of the world as she sees it.

©Katherine Shevchenko, 

Art Consultant/Framing Designer

-J.R. Mooney Galleries, Boerne TX

Feb. 2015

 See Sidney Sinclair’s work in person, on view at J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art, Boerne  TX.

The Boerne DYAD exhibition -- Artist Interviews, Catalog, and Website

Artist Interviews on Soundcloud Click to Listen to Sidney Sinclair

Click to Listen to Bill Scheidt

The Boerne DYAD exhibition catalog **Exhibition catalog contaning images of all the artwork in the    exhibition, artist statements and a Director's Note.  Click to Read the Catalog The Boerne DYAD website Click to see the Exhibition website http://jrmooneygalleries.wix.com/dyadexhibition

Podcast of artist Sidney Sinclair talk about her artwork for upcoming DYAD exhibition

**Listen to the newest podcast recording by J.R.Mooney Galleries of Fine Art**

-In this new edition of "Mooney Makes Sense", Art Consultant and Framing Designer, Katherine Shevchenko interviews Boerne artist Sidney Sinclair about her upcoming two person spotlight exhibition titled:  'The Cerebral Dichotomies' of the  Boerne DYAD.  Be sure to listen as Sidney tells us about her inspirations, her artistic career and passions that drive her artwork!! Listen to it here : https://soundcloud.com/j-r-mooney-galleries OR

Click Here to Listen

Seth Camm catalog and Save the Date

J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art are pleased to  announce the newest catalog selection of current work  by San Antonio artist, Seth Camm.   The spotlight artwork in  the catalog is a reflection of work available at the Boerne  Gallery location.    Click to Read SAVE THE DATE FEB. 14, 2015 SECOND SATURDAY ART & WINE CRAWL

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The Cerebral Dichotomies of The Boerne Dyad

The Cerebral Dichotomies

Of The

 Boerne Dyad

Bill Scheidt and Sidney Sinclair

Curatorial/ Gallery Statement:

In preliminary discussions with Sidney about a spotlight showing of her new artwork for our monthly events, we began to explore the new series she was working on. The most recent material she had was from a recently attended workshop by a prestigious mentor. However, Sidney was undecided in how to continue to create work using her abstractions vs. the traditional genres of her comfort zones. This created the conceptual basis for her part of the spotlight exhibition.

As I thought about her work, another Boerne artist, Bill Scheidt came to mind. Bill and Sidney had been showing in the same gallery for decades until it closed and then J.R. Mooney Galleries brought both aboard for representation. Their connections were like sister and brother; it would be like splitting up the family if one was brought to the forefront and not the other. If we showed them together we had a pair of local artists who have been working on their own projects, their own commissions and other institutions exhibitions outside the gallery. By bringing them back together we were bring a history, a dialogue, an interaction and I felt “Dyad” as a noun was perfect for a good description of the action itself.

However, we ran into snags along the way. Life took its toll on the production of the artwork, the little things added up; the holidays, sickness, other shows, etc. After following up with Sidney on the prospect of a highlighted collection of new work the material had changed. She was back exploring old sensibilities with new eyes. She was drawn back into her comfort zone with new ideas; working in a traditional sense with abstract concepts.  Struggling to gain a foothold on an overall cohesive body of work, we decided together that the exploration of her abstracts, the landscapes and everything in-between was a healthy decision, and not to edit in the studio – paint as she felt fit. 

Now, we were no longer dealing only with two artists as a dyad, but now one artist was dealing with two genres- the abstract and traditional. It was a dichotomy of sorts with conceptual and contextualized explanations for both ways of working and her need to continue to explore aspects of each. In her statement we see into her thoughts and begin to understand a new beginning of an old way.  The thoughts that linger, but driven ahead by the new, the new styles she wants to paint, the new images she sees that influence her work and the new experiences of the world around her that play a role in her paintings.

For Bill, large private commissions dominated his studio time; recent accolades in other cities spurred a rekindled interest in his work. A new body of artwork was out of the question.  So it was decided older work from his private collection would be swapped out with previously exhibited paintings already at the gallery, and we would show ones new to us, new to our clients and patrons.  Now we had a dyad for Bill, two categories of work, new to us, old to him and a swap of the old to the gallery and new to his private collection; a dyad: an interaction in a physical sense and a conceptual sense. More artwork would be supplemented by private consignments, giving our viewers opportunity to view aftermarket originals, fitting into Bill’s stable resale rate.  Our intent is to show how relevant older work can be in comparison to newer work, and the desire to project a cohesive variation of subjects, including wildlife, western, and Native American. Old and new for Bill was his dichotomy, time was the agent, and the visual connection of this span of work was the cemented and contextual analogy of thoughtful representations – hence the cerebral, or mind, brain, or intellectual connections throughout his work.

-Gabriel Diego Delgado

Gallery Director

J.R. Mooney Galleries, Boerne