Stellers Gallery at Ponte Vedra presents Hue – an exhibition of just that
Michelle Armas
“Who doesn’t love color?” asks Courtney Tinnesz Hill, director of Stellers Gallery at Ponte Vedra. Hue, Stellers at Ponte Vedra’s spring exhibition, is a celebration of the bold, playful, and powerful ways in which color can enrich our walls and our spirits. This exhibition, opening April 29, will feature works by artists Michelle Armas, Shawn Meharg, Enrique Mora, and Steve Williams – all of whom have one thing in common: their use of beautiful and vivid hues.
“They are all colorists,” says Hillary Whitaker,
Shawn Meharg
Stellers Gallery at Ponte Vedra owner. And perhaps for this reason, she says, they are often collected in the same homes and work well when exhibited together.
“Color can inspire, communicate, soothe, sway thinking, and alter our moods,” says Hill.
Color theory, she points out, even asserts that certain colors hold universal meaning, symbolizing direction, influencing appetite, and causing peacefulness or anger, to name a few.
Enrique Mora
Art takes it a step further. The influence of color used in art is more personal and subjective. “Whether the painting tells a story or is purely abstract, color has the power to transcend meaning and simply evoke emotion,” says
Hill.
By definition, a colorist painting uses color in a dominant way, heightening it over the other qualities of the artwork. Often, color becomes the very subject of the work. French
Impressionism of the late 19th century first approached painting through this lens, illustrating subject matter through fleeting, visual color; depicting hues as they changed at the mercy of natural light and shadow, rather than by their actual, inherent color. Color had perhaps its most singular role in the work of American Color Field painters of the 1940s and ’50s. Artists like Mark Rothko used large expanses of color to employ its
Steve Williams
transcendental abilities.
Armas, Meharg, Mora and Williams each use color differently, but all cite its power.
