Show Preview | Capture the Light: Inside-Outside

Denver, CO
Arts at Denver, April 4-26

Ken Valastro, Around the Park, oil, 36 x 48.

This story was featured in the April 2014 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art April 2014 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story!

Arts at Denver is celebrating its 23rd anniversary this month with a show titled Capture the Light: Inside-Outside. It kicks off on Friday, April 4, with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. and continues until Saturday, April 26. The show includes nearly 200 paintings from the gallery’s 33 artists, all centered around the theme of light and the individual ways each artist manipulates it to his or her own means.

Gallery owner and director Paula Colette Conley likes her anniversary shows to be inclusive of all of her artists and set out to find a theme to achieve that goal. “I was looking at the paintings in the gallery, at what makes each of them distinctive. And once you get beyond basic things like color or subject, every single painting differs in the way the artist approached light,”  Conley says. “Cecilia Thorell’s new painting PELARGONIA, a still life depicting a geranium, a green apple, and a leather case all resting on a table, was really the inspiration for the theme. It’s such a subtle little piece, but it’s the way she painted the color of the background that gives you the sense of what time of day it is and where it is exactly, and to be able to do that with just one single color I think is pretty amazing.” Among the other gallery artists in the show are Brenda Hendrix, Erin Hanson, Ken Valastro, Mike Natale, and Mimi DeOlloqui.

The gallery has come a long way from its humble beginnings two decades ago in a small Colorado mountain town. And with many of its original artists still showing with the gallery, it has become an intimate home for a number of artists and collectors who have been part of the journey since its inception. “We’re hoping as many of the artists as possible will come to help us celebrate 23 years,” Conley says. “We started the gallery in the little town of Silver Plume, CO, in 1991 on April Fools Day. And who would’ve thought that 23 years later here we would be, right in Denver and still going on with many of the artists we started with and with a lot of new ones, too. It’s a lot of fun.” —Joe Kovack

contact information
303.722.0422
www.artsatdenver.com

Featured in the April 2014 issue of Southwest Art magazine–click below to purchase:
Southwest Art April 2014 print issue or digital download Or subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss a story!