Sam Whitaker & Stella Zee. Nature's Nurture.

Artists' Reception May 3. 2024 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Brandt Gallery.

The exhibition runs through June 27, 2024

In Zee’s and Whitaker’s paintings the figure and the landscape merge to create a poetic narrative of environment, sanctuary and interconnectedness. While the paintings seem to portray a moment, the work is intended to reveal our timeless relationship to Nature. Zee’s paintings explore Nature as sanctuary, an environment into which we may enter and discover ourselves through the figures and animals that thrive there. Her paintings are intended to pull us into the deep lyrical beauty of the light, atmosphere and space she creates. Complementing Zee’s internal space dynamic, Whitaker’s landscapes are meant to push with rough flourishes into the picture plane. His overtly raw brushstrokes and painterly approach are intended to symbolize how Nature writhes and pulses around us, as much as Zee’s paintings expand almost infinitely into the canvas. Furthermore, Zee often appears in his paintings, playing the dual roles of artist and muse. In Whitaker’s work she embodies an enlightened relationship of harmony with and respect of Nature while revealing aspects of her own internal nature. “Nature’s Nurture” is meant to be an example of not only the sanctuary in which we find sustenance, but the vital self-awareness we may discover in our hearts.