The Oyster Point Gallery

Oyster Point Gallery Exhibitions, originally conceived by President Kevin Barry, and currently curated by Ellen Martin, provide a prestigious and viable alternative gallery venue to artists from New Jersey and nearby locations. Both emerging and established artists, many of whom are award-winning, have been included in the exhibitions that are shown in the public spaces of the first two floors of the Hotel. The work is primarily two-dimensional and encompasses painting, photography, wall-mounted sculpture, collage, and collaborative work.

 

The "Land and Sea" exhibition, featuring the work of Barbara Friedman, Seth Ruggles Hiler, Lucy Kalian, and Carol Magnatta, will be on display this weekend. Although landscape painting has a rich and deep history in Chinese culture. In Western art, it didn’t come into its own as a genre worthy of an artist’s attention until the 17th century. Nature became a subject, not a background.

 

"This is a different exhibit for the Hotel," says Curator Ellen Martin. "I skew heavily toward the abstract so I wanted to bring a representational show to the community. The work ranges from the very traditional paintings by Barbara Friedman to the expressionist paintings of Seth Ruggles Hiler. I hope everyone enjoys it."

 

What landscape painting means to each artist:

“The landscape is a system of sorts, one that suggests fragility and time, much like the human condition in a search for natural order. It is in this seeking that the physical is also psychological; the specificity of place is not as important as the feeling it evokes.” - Barbara Friedman.

 

When we step out into nature we are given the freedom to connect with a force that does not speak the language of scarcity. My paintings attempt to reflect the abundance of the fields and skies which put the world into perspective for me.” - Seth Ruggles Hiler.

 

“My immediate surroundings and the natural world are what move me to paint. And of all nature's facets, color is the driving force. Sometimes, nature uses me as a conduit to capture its wonders on canvas and share them with the world.” - Carol Magnatta

 

“With the Wave paintings, I’m superficially celebrating the coastline, but beneath the surface, a deeper exploration of constant shifting. They are about yearning for things unknown and intangible, reveling in the sheer exuberance of experience, monitoring, in every state, the current position, and exploring the forces where land and water meet.”

- Lucy Kalian