Somewhat Slightly
Amy Bay, Molly Herman, Meg Lipke
October 9 - November 23, 2014

Artist Talk: Sunday, November 23rd, 6pm
Closing Reception: Sunday, November 23rd, 6-9pm

Peninsula Art Space is pleased to present Somewhat Slightly, a three-person exhibition featuring works by Amy Bay, Molly Herman and Meg Lipke, which explore the artists’ common investigation of the materiality, physicality, and process of painting.

Spatial ambiguities are central to the artists’ works. Forms are swallowed up by washes, buried in layers of paint, re-exposed through resists and translucency, and hinted at through the structures employed; often unsettling the distinctions between foreground and background. Chromatic choices also contribute to the confusion of planes, depths, and surfaces, with each artist upturning the logical placements of advancing and receding colors. Bay, Herman and Lipke approach painting as a process that questions the nature of painting itself. Directly responding to the activity of paint as the work unfolds, the artists react as much to their creative forces as to the materiality of painting. Their works are driven by the essence of the medium, from which implicit and independent linguistic forms are derived, with their own principles and meanings.

Drawing from the artists’ environment and shared influences, which range from the decorative arts, to nature, landscape, and patterns, the works in the exhibition engage with painting as an independent cognitive and sensorial object. The resulting works are distinct, but their mutual approaches resonate and reverberate together.

AMY BAY is a painter based in Portland, Oregon. She has been awarded grants and projects from the Lower East Side Printshop, Dieu Donne Papermill and Women's Studio Workshop and has shown her work both nationally and internationally. Her exhibition history has included shows at The Drawing Center, Printed Matter, Dieu Donne Papermill, Brooklyn Public Library, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Carriage House at The Islip Museum and Spaceworks Tacoma. Bay received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Winchester School of Art, England and Spain. www.amybay.com

MOLLY HERMAN lives and paints in New York City and teaches at Parsons School of Design.  She has exhibited in New York and internationally since 1995. Her paintings are part of numerous private and corporate collections. Her work draws inspiration from nature, process, pattern and tapestry. She has recently exhibited at The National Arts Club, Bowery Gallery and Seton Hall University Gallery. Molly Herman’s work is represented by Amy Simon Gallery. Molly was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Alexandria, Virginia. After receiving her degree in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, Molly studied art and archeology in France and Spain. Returning to the States to pursue painting, Molly received her Masters in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where she studied with Joan Snyder, Brenda Goodman and Jake Bethot. www.mollyherman.com

MEG LIPKE is a painter living and maintaining a studio practice in Ghent, NY and Bushwick, Brooklyn. She received a BA with Honors in Art from the University of Vermont and an MFA in Painting from Cornell University. She has taught at the University of Northern Iowa, Cornell University and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited in New York at Pocket Utopia, Centotto, Parallel Art Space, Schema Projects and Norte Maar, and is currently on view in Marseilles, Cyprus and Brooklyn. Her most recent solo show at Parallel Art Space in January featured paintings on felt, cardboard and paper investigating textile samples, family history and the British painter LS Lowry. www.meglipke.com