Gallery Roaming with Chris on Tuesday

My friend Chris and I met at one of the 40 galleries in Culver City yesterday, proceeded to several others, and enjoyed the current art being exhibited.  Our first stop was Blum & Poe at 2727 S. La Cienega Blvd where we saw work by Matt Saunders on the first floor entitled "Neon in Daylight."  He uses a cameraless photographic technique in which light is passed through painted linen or Mylar onto photosensive paper.  Matt Sanders was born in 1975 in Tacoma Washington, schooled at Yale (MFA) and has had recent solo exhibitions at the Tate Liverpool and other places.    Here is a sample of his work:

 Upstair at Blum & Poe is the work of Penny Slinger, a British-born artist who uses collages from different eras and never-before-seen film footage.  The description of her work describes how the artist "mined surrealism in the 60's and 70's to plumb the depths of the feminine psyche and subconscious...to express the more liberated realms of super consciousness."  She studied at the Chelsea College of Art in late 1960's. In the late 1970's, Slinger used her own staged photographs to create hauntingly surreal collages.   He is a small sample of her work.

The Cherry and Martin Gallery at 2712 La Cienega Blvd is showing some of the work of Lew Thomas called "Structual(ism) and Photography."  Below is one of his works entitled "Throwing-Nikomat" (1973) which integrates "the act of photography with the images photographed."

Next we went to the George Billis Gallery at 2716 S. La Cienega where we enjoyed the paintings of Kurt Solmssen who is described as a contemporary realist painter who captures his surroundings and life in the northwest Puget Sound area.  He is a plein air painter who uses bright color and light.  He was born and schooled in Philadelphia and has many solo exhibitions on both coasts.  Here is a sample of his work:

"Yellow Boat Summer Evening," 2013, oil on linen

"RG and the Yellow Boat,"  2013 oil on linen

"Bonfire," 2013 oil on linen

"Summer Coffee," 2013 oil on linen (The sun was shining through a window on this painting)

"Marsha and Forsythia," 2013 oil on linen

The other artist that we enjoyed at the George Billis Gallery is Matt Condron and his oil paintings of chairs.  He describes himself:  "I am a self-taught oil painter working in the realist style.  I work from photos I take during my travels largely throughout the U.S...some...from a recent trip to Chile...I hope to capture that still point between hurried activity whereby the viewer alone might remain, suspended in some reverie or another of his or her own."  Let's see what you think:

Next door we discovered  some interesting art by an artist by the name of Mitro, a French painter who was born in Rumania in 1957 and Masai Family and busts by Daniele Matalon in bronze.

And finally we roamed in to the Western Project gallery at 2762 S. La Cienega Blvd to see the new drawings by Patrick Lee. "For over ten years Lee has worked on his series "Deadly Friends;" an investigation into the lives of men on the streets of America. Looking to understand the subtle and often forceful appearances of men the artist has created a body of work this time inspired by the environs around LA City Jail and the nearby Union Station."   He meets and photographs random folks, listens to their stories and draws their portraits.
Here are some of his drawings: