The Geary Gallery of Darien proudly presents its October exhibit, “Environment’s Inspiration,” featuring the contemporary landscape paintings of Dutchess County, NY artist, Ginny Howsam Friedman. Her nature-inspired abstracts will be on display October 1-29. The Geary Gallery is located at 576 Boston Post Road in Darien. All are welcome and admission is free.
About Ginny Howsam Friedman
For the past two years, Ginny Howsam Friedman has mostly lived and worked in Dutchess County, Upstate New York, where she happily cannot escape the landscape!
Howsam Friedman’s sweet spot in landscape painting combines the opposing forces of representation and abstraction. The result is an amalgamation of real and imagined elements coming together in a contemporary landscape painting.
She uses an elevated perspective as a jumping-off spot when creating her pieces. Another approach is to zoom in on detail. She enlarges these views and discovers patterns, finds shapes and negative spaces, and looks for lines and texture. She creates a new moment that speaks to the environment—a memory overlap of many images.
She uses a sense of nature that is experienced as a touchstone, then moves toward abstraction. She draws some of her inspiration from cultivated farmland, ponds, streams, forests, mountains, gardens or maybe a glimpse of a walking path.
Howsam Friedman feels a need to make the familiar abstract, yet emotionally transporting. Through the painting process, loosely based on one or more figurative views, she creates an image of interlocking, overlapping and tilting shapes. Drawing is an important part of the paintings. She layers in oils, as well as draws in oil, charcoal, graphite, stabilo and oil stick. She then wipes, scrapes and erases. She works the surface allowing traces to remain. Many turns at painting, drawing and amending are involved. A final image is achieved by staying open to change and chance.
She received a BFA with Honors from Pratt Institute. She also studied at the 92nd Street Y/ Eric Fischl Master Class, the Woodstock School of Art, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, the New York Studio School, the JVS Project Space and The Art Students League.
Howsam Friedman is represented in private collections all over the country and has exhibited widely. In addition to this month’s exhibit at the Geary Gallery, this year she has exhibited at The Pinkwater Gallery, Kingston, NY, The Arts Society of Kingston, the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) Juried Small Works, NAWA Juried “Where I Want to Be, NAWA Juried “Paths” exhibition and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.
To view her paintings, and to read more, visit our online gallery.
Gallery Location & Hours
Geary Gallery is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and is located at 576 Boston Post Road, Darien, CT 06820. For more information, call (203) 655-6633.