An exhibition of new work by Jennifer Bell, Gregg Kreutz, and Tony Saladino marks the opening of Gallery Shoal Creek's new location in the Flatbed Building, 2832 E. MLK Blvd.

The stylistically diverse painters represent the range and quality of fine art for which Gallery Shoal Creek is known. The exhibition, which opens on April 19, explores realism, impressionism, and abstraction, and how they play off of one another.

GREGG KREUTZ / Mystery

Gregg Kreutz's paintings embrace realism in the traditions of the Dutch Masters. A highly versatile painter, his subject matter includes still lifes, landscapes, figures, interiors and urban architecture. He works from his New York City studio overlooking Union Square, and is immersed in life of the city. Compositionally, he focuses on light and shadow and how atmosphere envelops the whole to create illusions and mystery. Kreutz travels frequently and is seldom without his sketchbook. The exhibition will feature recent paintings inspired by visits to the French countryside.

JENNIFER BELL / Imagination

Jennifer Bell's paintings are dramatic inventions of characters set in the late nineteenth century. Each is a snapshot of a moment where observation and imagination merge in the artist's mind. For the Vancouver based artist, the era and works of the Impressionists - the color, the rendering of candid moments - ignites her passion and inspires her art. Her favorite artists of the period, Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas, depicted people whose lives you could imagine. Creating everyday characters/stories that she brings to life, Bell follows in their footsteps.

TONY SALADINO / Rhythm

A master of color, Tony Saladino creates large-scale abstracted landscapes. "Shape sets the structure. . . [but] the interplay of all of the parameters of color set the tone," says the Texas based artist. A native of New Orleans and an avid tango dancer, it is no surprise that Saladino's current works are strongly influenced by music. Inspired by music from Mozart, Debussy or Stravinsky, his process aims to achieve harmony through nuances of hue, temperature and value while creating interest with rhythmic variation.

New York based Milt Kobayashi presents a collection of small works that continues the artist's focus on the female in her quiet world. Here, he models his subjects with slightly more color, leaning towards a yellow palette. His use of broad bravura strokes has given way to tighter control and smaller movements in the brushwork. While his general compositional elements remain the same, the new work demonstrates a growing interest in Nicholai Fechin and the Russian-born painter's subtle modulation in portraying his figures.

Jill Lear joins Austin artist Katie Maratta for a two-person show launching Gallery Shoal Creek's 2013 exhibition schedule.

Ms. Lear and Ms. Maratta have each developed their own unique artistic identities and their work, immediately recognizable, has a familiarity that connects with the viewer. While distinctively different in scale and stylistic approach, each relies heavily on line and geometry and finds common ground through references to nature. Maratta uses the interplay of tones to achieve rhythm and balance, and Lear employs the interaction of color swatches with the same dexterity.

In creating her "horizonscapes," Maratta offers an apparent contradiction. While the literal picture plane is only one inch high and up to four feet long, the visual space it suggests is vast. These wide-open expanses and long lonely highways may be the stuff of clichéd country songs and western movies, yet they evoke wonder for both the artist and viewer.

In contrast, Lear expresses the landscape as a defined and measured place. Delineated by structural elements and proportion, negative space and positive forms, color and light, her large-scale mixed media renderings of magnificent trees reference urban environments and well-preserved botanical gardens. Gradually, Austin's historic oaks are finding their way into her work.

Lear and Maratta have great respect and interest in each other's work. The two artists look forward to staging this joint presentation where one's work will play off the other.

Working on the fringes of landscape, each artist investigates density through collective mark-making. Whether using a literal buildup of paint or intertwining linear forms, the surface undulates from concentrated density to open, sweeping expanses.

SHAWN CAMP
"Consumed with the duality of nature and humanity ... SHAWN CAMP thinks in polarities," notes arts writer Erin Keever. He creates seductive surfaces that both reveal and conceal as his mark-making alternates thickly layered areas with sections of thinly applied paint. In POST LINEAR, Camp's large abstract canvases serve as a metaphor for the spreading mark of humanity on the environment.

BIELI LIU
Multidisciplinary artist, BEILI LIU moves between time and process based installations and two-dimensional works, drawing on everyday materials to craft what she describes as microcosms of fragility and poignancy. "I watch for the moment of surprise, when the material responds to one or a series of actions and leads to an exciting physical or conceptual outcome."

SANDRA PRATT
Spare, yet fluid, SANDRA PRATT'S paintings are intuitive and spontaneous. Drawn to the infinite possibilities of paint, she uses palette knife and broad strokes to create a fresh vantage point of familiar subjects. "There are many ways to tell a story," muses Pratt, who favors simplicity. Following themes of sparse landscapes, coastlines, or the lone house in the distance, Pratt seeks to create space and a meditative stillness.

Gallery Shoal Creek will showcase new work by Aleksander and Lyuba Titovets in a fall exhibition which opens September 28 and runs through October 20, 2012. The exhibition marks the 20th anniversary of the classically trained duo's arrival in the United States and celebrates the artistic success each has achieved in their adopted country. The Titovets will be in Austin for the opening reception on Friday, September 28, from 6 to 8 pm at the gallery's central Austin space.

In 1992, with political change taking hold, the young couple, along with Lyuba's family, was able to emigrate from St. Petersburg, Russia to El Paso, Texas. Within a few short years, the two had established themselves as professional artists, and were warmly embraced by their adopted community. Arriving near the border at the crossroads of cultures, they were met with openness and opportunity. Now, twenty years later, they are recognized nationally and highly collected.

Gallery Shoal Creek will launch the Fall 2010 exhibition schedule with PAPER III which opens on August 24, and runs through September 22, 2012. The exhibition explores the creative process of five artists whose work incorporates printmaking, drawing, Installation and sculptural works of hand-made paper. The five represent a range of personal experiences and artistic accomplishments. Yet, all share a devotion to the medium of paper, a strong foundation in printmaking and drawing, and a sense of discovery inherent to the multi-staged creative process each pursues.

"Seeing my work is like looking in a mirror," says Texas artist René Alvarado. Without question, there is a personal nature to each of Alvarado's paintings. In the upcoming exhibition, his series of Madonna portraits reference both familial and cultural experiences. The female figure, notes Laura Harrison in a recent article, represents the matriarchal society of his childhood and provides him a vehicle to express his deep respect for the women in his family. Each portrait, presented in formal poses and arrayed in symbolic imagery, conveys virtuous strengths and emotional elements that run throughout the artist's narratives. Alvarado's symbolism is a complex mixture of adopted and personal iconography. He draws on the rich cultural heritage of his native Mexico where the reverence for Catholic saints and the cultural folklore intermingle. His metaphorical imagery remains rooted in his heritage yet embraces the world he has traveled and his adopted home in West Texas.

Leonard Lehrer is an American artist whose work transcends time. In both his artistic and personal journeys, gardens have been a constant and speak symbolically of cultural histories. As a young man, Lehrer embraced the ordered realm of the formal gardens in France and England. Afforded the opportunity to travel, he discovered the Moorish gardens of the Alhambra in southern Spain, and revisited his family's roots in Eastern Europe, photographing and sketching gardens and city views. The panoramic View of St. Petersburg is just one of many lithographs which fill Lehrer's extensive portfolio. Recently, he began revisiting these earlier black and white works, selecting editioned lithographs to hand-color. In doing so, he has created unique pieces where the patterned rhythmic shapes of skylines, rooftops, statuary and hedgerows are accentuated.

A multifaceted presentation, this solo exhibition reflects on Lehrer's strength of vision and clarity of composition. The formal European perspective—symmetrically balanced vistas and gardens—will hang alongside a newly created series of small still life images. These, too, marry lithographic impressions with watercolor tinting. To cap the installation, a large digital collage titled View from Strawberry Mansion—named after the immigrant community in Philadelphia where he grew up—will celebrate Lehrer's career and his lifelong passion for creating art.

New York based figurative painter Milt Kobayashi is known internationally for his intimate, urban interiors in which he distills the essence of a casual moment. Expressive narrative, cadence of color, and brevity of the brushstroke characterize the subtle style the artist has perfected.

Gallery Shoal Creek has represented Mr. Kobayashi since 1984. Over the course of nearly three decades, his work has garnered national and international attention. The gallery is proud to be a part of the Kobayashi legacy and to showcase his newest work.

From Jerry Ruthven's realistic impressions of the Texas Hill Country to William Kalwick's plein air paintings of the Colorado Rockies, The Landscape and Beyond brings together five artists with distinct styles. Aleksander and Lyuba Titovets, Russian born and classically trained, provide a European perspective while Kirk Tatom leans toward pastoral views with a quiet solitude.

Cast bronze and paint on canvas meet in an exhibition of work by Gustavo Torres and Marc Burckhardt on view at Gallery Shoal Creek from November 11 through December 3.  The opening reception, on Friday, November 11, will unveil an intimate viewing of sculpture, paintings and drawings by the two artists.  Masters of their craft, both Torres and Burckhardt adopt symbolic imagery to convey complex themes and engage the viewer.

Working from his spacious studio in East Austin, Camp explores the human need to create order from disorder. The marked landscape becomes a metaphor for this basic human tendency. He distills the ever changing landscape to a textured surface of paint that suggests topographical features and delineates boundaries and navigational markings. The varied application of paint reveals an intersection of the raw, natural environment and the ordered grid that man projects upon it.

Through their work, each artist speaks of movement, that sense of "passing by" as Maratta calls it. Pratt records a single frame, distilling the view to near abstraction recording only the essential elements. Maratta, choosing a panoramic format, focuses on the sparse detail etched on a horizon line that stretches as far as the eye can see. Link's three-dimensional ceramics bring the conversation together. Etching loose graphic imagery and delicate detail on the surface of spherical vessels, she conveys a winding narrative within a changing landscape. From the back roads of West Texas to the Autobahn, the three artists share their unique perspective.

Speaking in the rich visual language for which he is known, Alvarado blends a complex mixture of personal and adopted iconography. The artist's narrative unfolds in his newest canvases as one explores the layered imagery and cultural metaphors; intermixed are sensory impressions from his travels in Morocco and the magical city of Marrakesh. The desert flora and saturated colors of the region add yet another layer to the artist's lush narratives.

Traveling, I often sense an unspoken language of familiarity . . . art. I find myself uncovering a hidden appreciation for the new surroundings and discover, at the same time, a missing piece of my own identity. Such was the case in Morocco as I disappeared from my own reality and became a shadow amongst the colors on a different cultural stage. Morocco imprinted a complex enigma of woven colors, textures, scents and sounds much like El Manantial, my birthplace in northern Mexico.

Heather Carter's and Nicholas Dertien's distinct three-dimensional work intersects in TIDES, an ON SITE installation which calls attention to the ebb and flow of time. Carter's lifeboats - constructed of bent wood and reclaimed materials - and Dertien's glass and ceramic surfaces play with light and shadow as they crisscross the gallery's open spaces. Embracing shared themes, the two Austin area artists speak metaphorically of human thresholds, generational imprints, and what we leave in our wake.

Focusing on environmental stewardship issues, Heather Carter [BFA, Southwestern University] is both sculptor and journalist. She lives and works in Wimberley in an off-grid solar powered house/studio. Commissioned by the City of Austin, she created The Souls of the Trees, a multi-piece bent wood installation which hangs in the Spicewood Springs Library.

Nicholas Dertien - artist, designer, glass blower - received his MFA in 2009 from Rhode Island School of Design. Upon returning to Austin, he set up his studio and workshop in a converted quonset hut at ArtPost in East Austin where he introduced his clear glass torsos and photograms in E.A.S.T. 2010.

PRESENCE / ABSENCE, a collaboration between Gallery Shoal Creek and The Texas Advanced Computing Center, explores the work of four artists who use digital media to transform the content and experience of their work. The digital exhibition, a collaboration between Gallery Shoal Creek and The Texas Advanced Computing Center, will be on view at the ACES Visualization Lab on the UT campus, April 7 and 9.

Jill Lear is known for her large scale mixed media renderings of magnificent trees identified by their coordinates. In these, she expresses the landscape as a particular, defined and measured place - those PLACES identified by longitude and latitude. While completing a 2010 artist residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, Lear broadened her explorations to include the idea of territory, that amorphous, intuitive SPACE arrived at through an accumulation of sensory experiences.

New York based figurative painter, Milt Kobayashi, is known internationally for his intimate, urban works in which he distills the essence of a casual moment. Expressive narrative, cadence of color, and brevity of the brushstroke characterize the subtle style the artist has perfected. Mr. Kobayashi and Gallery Shoal Creek have had a close association for over twenty-five years.

Gallery Shoal Creek will showcase new work by Aleksander and Lyuba Titovets in a fall exhibition which opens on October 22 and runs through November 20, 2010. The classically trained duo immigrated from St. Petersburg, Russia, and both have achieved much artistic success and numerous accolades since arriving in their adopted country in 1992. The Titovets will be in Austin for the opening reception on Friday, October 22, from 6 to 8 pm at the gallery's central Austin space.

Gallery Shoal Creek will launch the Fall 2010 exhibition schedule with PAPER 2 which opens on September 2, and runs through October 2, 2010. The Exhibition explores the creative process of five artists whose work incorporates printmaking, collages, and sculptural works of hand-made paper. The gallery will host an artists reception on Friday, September 17.

The artists represent a continuum of personal and artistic experiences. Yet, all share a devotion to the medium of paper, a strong foundation in printmaking, and a sense of discovery inherent to the multi-staged creative process each pursues.