For Immediate Release:
Contact: David Kuehn, Executive Director
Cotuit Center for the Arts
Phone: (508) 428-0669
Email: [email protected]
Website: ArtsOnTheCape.org
“Reluctant Landscapes” at Cotuit Center for the Arts, May 21 to June 29
Cotuit Center for the Arts presents “Reluctant Landscapes,” an exhibit of abstract paintings and
sculpture by Jan Lhormer, Betty Carroll Fuller, and Susan Lyman, from May 21 to June 29 in the main
gallery. In the upper galleries will be “Call Me Ishmael,” a juried show.
The opening reception for both exhibits is Saturday, May 24, from 5 to 7 PM. There will be a
Following Friday brown bag lunch discussion of the exhibit on Friday, May 30, at noon.
All three artists featured in “Reluctant Landscapes” are inspired by the Cape Cod landscape, but have
chosen in Lhormer’s words, “intuitive and inventive ways” of interpreting the landscape.
Lhormer’s abstract paintings reflect the natural beauty of Cape Cod: the ever-changing kinetic
qualities of landscape and the ethereal open space of the seascape. Influenced by abstract
expressionists and colorfield painters, Lhormer has developed her own language of painting, layering
paint, building up color intensity, gestural brush strokes, and landscape references: suggestions of
“gardens and vines and growth and matter, the stuff you run into when you are swimming in the
ocean.”
Lhormer, who lives in Falmouth, describes herself as “a ‘painter’s painter,’ someone who is more
about the paint, light, and space, and the formal elements of painting, than a literal story.”
Recently, she has been painting over some of her earlier paintings, layering paint on and intensifying
the colors. She transformed “Night Vines,” originally a softly hued piece, by “really pushing the
color,” she said. The piece, now named “Purple Rain,” captures the light at night in an unusual way,
giving it a subtle grainy quality.
The forms reference the earth and sky, but are not specifically literal. They are left to the viewer’s
imagination. Perhaps there is a flower or a squash to one side of the painting. Another form
resembles a butterfly.
Lhormer has exhibited her work at The Trustman Gallery at Simmons College in Boston, The
Decordova Museum Corporate Loan Program in Lincoln, MA, the Reynolds Ryan Gallery in New
Orleans, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art. She received her BFA and MFA in painting from the
Boston University School of Visual Arts. She will be featured in Deborah Forman’s upcoming book on
abstract artists of Cape Cod.
Betty Carroll Fuller also finds inspiration in the Cape Cod landscape. She lives in Falmouth, near
Buzzards Bay and particularly enjoys the winter landscape, “when the bay is frozen and the sun is
reflecting off broken pieces of ice, giving a feeling of layers and color and movement.”
“Although I’ve always felt firmly rooted in abstract expressionism,” she writes, “my current interest is
in a more reductive abstraction, a search for simplicity and clarity in a complex world. I love simple
forms, sensitive lines, layers of color, vague space.”
Abstract art appeals to her because allows her to express feelings and concepts that cannot be
articulated in realistic painting, just as jazz gives musicians another way to express what they may not
be able to say in classical music. “Abstract art gives you way of representing the way a lily smells, the
way the light hits the water, family dynamics, strength and tenderness,” Fuller said.
“Art is what makes us human beings,” Fuller said. “I am fortunate to live on the Cape and to have so
many wonderful colleagues. We can share ideas and conversations about art. It is a very special
place.”
Fuller has a BA from the University of Maryland, School of Art and Architecture. She studied art with
Joan Snyder at Castle Hill in Truro. She is a professor of Art and Communications at Cape Cod
Community College and has exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the
Higgins Art Gallery, the Cahoon Museum of American Art, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
The Cape Cod landscape has been a source of materials and inspiration for Susan Lyman’s sculpture
and oil painting since 1984, when, with permission, she thinned her first truckload of bittersweet
vine from an overgrown wood behind the house of a Wellfleet shell fisherman. Since then, she has
been scavenging for sculpture materials at the beach, in the woods, at local tree dumps, or curbside,
gathering fallen wood with an eye for a twisted vine or root mass, cedar with characteristic ridged
surfaces, a sinuous beech, a graceful balsam Christmas tree, even weathered wash-a-shore beach
detritus.
She considers wood “a warm, comfortable material,” and enjoys the adventure of looking for
flowing, sinewy natural forms that she can sculpt into evocative, sensuous pieces. In her
“collaboration with nature,” she shapes, sands, burnishes, paints, and refinishes each piece into
abstract, but suggestive shapes.
Lyman creates collages from photographs she takes of trees and woods on the Cape and in distant
places such as the temperate rainforest of Washington State and the 500-year-old English oak
pollards at Windsor Great Park in England. She adds photos and drawings of collected plant
specimens, strange fruits and vegetables and found imagery, and these collages become the sketches
for her paintings.
Lyman has exhibited her work in numerous exhibitions in the US, Japan, and New Zealand. Recent
one-person exhibitions include Hunter Gallery at St. George’s School in Newport, RI, the
Provincetown Art Association and Museum. She teaches sculpture, drawing, and three-dimensional
design at Providence College.
“Call Me Ishmael,” juried by Lhormer, Fuller, and Lyman, will also run May 21 through June 29. The
juried show will be presented in tandem with the Main Stage production of “Moby-Dick! The
Musical!” which is a mixture of high camp, wild anachronism, and double entendre. Two- and threedimensional work celebrating any interpretation of Moby-Dick will be accepted.
Drop off for jurying is Monday, May 19, from 10 AM to 4 PM.
Cotuit Center for the Arts is at 4404 Route 28 in Cotuit. Gallery hours are 10 AM to 4 PM Monday
through Saturday; daily from Memorial Day through Columbus Day; and evenings during Main Stage
performances.
There is no charge to attend the gallery, the opening reception, or the Following Friday talk. For more
information, visit artsonthecape.org or call 508-428-0669.
# # #
What:
“Reluctant Landscapes”
Where:
Cotuit Center for the Arts, 4404 Route 28, Cotuit
When:
Exhibit: May 21 to June 29; Opening Reception, Saturday, May 24, 5 to 7 PM; Following Friday
brown bag lunch art talk, Friday, May 30, noon
Admission:
Free
END