Blue Mountain Gallery
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Margaret Leveson
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Artist reception: Friday, January 14, from 5 to 8pm
"Summer Diary," Margaret Leveson's upcoming exhibition of paintings in oil, is the narrative of a summer spent at her country home near Margaretville, in New York's Catskill Mountains. The house and land originally belonged to J. Francis Murphy, a well-known 19th Century artist, and his wife Ada Murphy, a painter. Leveson inherited their legacy and continued to paint and draw on the property after moving there in 1977. A charcoal drawing of a road through the woods, done when she first sketched the grounds, recurs in a recent painting--some 20 years later. She has since captured that landscape in intimate detail and infinite variety.
The paintings that comprise her summer diary are filled with the kinds of personal objects and motifs found in a Bonnard. There are 20 small works, 12 x 12", and larger paintings ranging in size from 20 x 24" to 38 x 40", that distill a season of reflection--a garden in full bloom, dense woods of oaks and cedar and pine, waterfalls, a white house against a profusion of hollyhocks, a window sill, a book left open, the dog. Detail is important to Leveson's work--each brushstroke successively adds to a tangible surface texture--but light, and shadow, particularly in high-contrast, is what most captures Leveson's imagination. Some of the paintings, like Light in the Woods, divide nearly in half as light vies against dark. The effect is like stepping out into sunshine or entering a shaded place--a pleasant sensation that draws the viewer into the artist's personal reverie.
Margaret Leveson has an MFA from Brooklyn College. She has studied art at The Art Students League and The New York Studio School, as well as art history in the masters program at New York University Institute of Fine Art. She has shown in numerous exhibitions including the National Academy of Design, NY; Zone One in Asheville, NC; and Wayne Art Center, Wayne, PA. In the spring of 1998 her Prospect Park paintings were featured in a solo show at BCUE Gallery, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and she showed in a two person exhibition at Bradshaw House Gallery, Birmingham, AL. She is in corporate and private collections throughout the US. Leveson has been with Blue Mountain Gallery since 1980. Her painting, Bovina Garden, will be featured in Martin Scorcese's film, "You Can Count on Me," due out this year.
You can also view Margaret Leveson's work at the Web gallery: NextMonet.com
For further information contact the Gallery or Margaret Leveson 718 499 9252.
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