Sorrel Sky Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
June 4-30
Elsa Sroka, Yellow Settee, oil, 18 x 24.
It’s a long-awaited milestone: On Friday, June 4, from 12 to 4 p.m., guests gather at Sorrel Sky Gallery’s Santa Fe location for a reception to celebrate new works by painter Elsa Sroka and sculptor Lisa Gordon. “This show will be our first bona fide live event in quite some time,” says gallery owner Shanan Campbell with more than a touch of relief. Over a year ago, pandemic restrictions dramatically tamped down Santa Fe’s gallery scene, sending events and sales alike almost exclusively online. And while those virtual options are still available, both Campbell and the artists look forward to welcoming people face to face, although still socially distanced. Even the show’s title, Balance and Harmony, expresses the sense of relief and joy, and an openness to the natural world around us, that comes with a return to normal life and emanates brightly from Sroka’s and Gordon’s works alike. “Both of them have found a happy space in their art for celebrating animals,” notes Campbell.
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- Elsa Sroka, Dreamer, oil, 38 x 24.
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- Lisa Gordon, Precarious Relations, bronze, 16 x 14 x 10.
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- Lisa Gordon, High Ball, bronze, 12 x 5 x 4.
For Sroka, that means painting realistic yet expressively rendered cows, as well as occasional other critters such as foxes and birds, in amusingly incongruous settings. “I like to take them out of their traditional settings and put them somewhere that makes you pay attention in a different way,” says the artist. Her recent painting titled DREAMER, for example, depicts its bovine subject taking its ease atop a mattress, an inscrutable expression on its face. “I want to bring to my art a joyfulness that makes people smile,” Sroka adds.
Approximately 10 new works from the Denver-based painter give gallery visitors many reasons to do just that. Sroka notes that she has been particularly pleased with how her work has continued to evolve over the past year, helped in part by her virtual studies with painter Kevin Weckbach, which have encouraged her to bring even greater self-assurance to her approach. Adds Campbell, “Elsa’s paintings just catch my attention and bring me joy, and we all need a whole lot more of that in today’s environment.”
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- Elsa Sroka, Little Calico, oil, 8 x 10.
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- Lisa Gordon, Rockin’ Rodeo Cowgirl, bronze, 15 x 17 x 10.
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- Elsa Sroka, Blueberry Dreams, oil, 19 x 31.
A similar feeling of delightful disorientation reigns in the bronzes of Lisa Gordon. She’ll be showing at least 20 sculptures, which feature realistic horses whimsically posed yet often—at least to a human’s perspective—precariously balanced. “The juxtaposition between the lines of the hard-edged element and the organic horse is one of my signatures,” says the lifelong rider, who lives on over an acre of equine-friendly land not far from central Santa Fe. Also available will be 30 to 40 reasonably priced miniature animals Gordon has sculpted and cast during the pandemic year—“everything from roosters to pandas, giraffes to polar bears, turkeys to zebras, owls to flying pigs,” notes Campbell. These add yet another touch of joy to a show that genuinely celebrates the sorely needed return to a time of harmony and balance. —Norman Kolpas
contact information
505.501.6555
www.sorrelsky.com
This story appeared in the June/July 2021 issue of Southwest Art magazine.