208 Bradford Street * Provincetown * MA 02657
Ph 508-487-6411 * Fx 508-487-8794 * bertawalker@bertawalkergallery.com
www.bertawalkergallery.com

LOREN MAC IVER¹s New England Premiere is of works made on the dunes of Provincetown from 1931-1941

ROBERT HENRY reveals series of paintings completed over the past two years

ELSPETH HALVORSEN presents new constructions

LOREN MacIVER (1909-1998)
The Provincetown Years, 1931-1941
Loren MacIver painted on the dunes of Provincetown/Truro for ten consecutive years (1931-1941), in a shack she and her husband built much like those now part of the preservation under the guidance of the Peaked Hill Trust.
As a painter, Loren MacIver understood the poetic undercurrent of objects, much as Cezanne saw the structure within. That she was able to convey that onto a two-dimensional surface with paint was her genius. Many artists create scenes. MacIver created other worlds. Historian and painter Tony Vevers wrote: "The major component of MacIver¹s art in its striving for transcendence is light--her paintings seem to contain their own light sources, which enliven and illuminate their forms ."
As observed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times: "Loren MacIver belongs to a tradition of often overlooked painters blessed with a light, graphic touch. It extends from Marie Laurencin to William Wegman,(to) Paul KleeŠ overlooked, due to the advent of Pop and Minimalism." MacIver was shown for nearly fifty years by one of New York¹s leading galleries, The Pierre Matisse Gallery. Alfred Stieglitz wrote the catalogue essay for her first solo show declaring "This girl should be given a chance to paint, if anybody should be given a chance to paint," and in her second show she became the first woman painter to be purchased by Alfred Barr, Director of New York¹s Museum of Modern Art. She was avidly collected by the Metropolitan Museum, received a retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 1953, and was included in the 1962 Venice Biennial.
Time has stood its test, and MacIver, a woman of great talent, persevered during a time when women did not receive equal time with their male peers. MacIver developed her special brand of descriptive, miniaturist formalism, "abbreviating the world into diffident arrangements of spare images and hieroglyphs buffeted by pale washes of color." (Roberta Smith). She evolved her own scaled-down versions of many devices ­ thin paint, luminous color, hieroglyphic symbols, all-over compositions that would be hailed in the late 1940¹s and 50¹s as the "distinguishing characteristics of the New York School," wrote Smith. Smith also observed: MacIver "can be grouped loosely with other miniaturists of human or natural existence, including Biala, Morris Graves, and Mark Tobey." In MacIver¹s own words, she explains that her interest in "simple things" was intended to "lead the eye by various manipulation of colors, objects and tensions toward a transformation."Observing these works," says Berta Walker, "one might think she could actually see the spirits on the dunes. She certainly painted the special energy we feel when living there."
Describing her work in a recent exhibition focusing on the years she was exhibited at the Matisse Gallery , Diedre Stein Greben in ART News observed: "Most impressive is... hat the years have done nothing to dim the immediacy or the appeal of these works. The strength of MacIver¹s art comes from its ability to reconcile, or rather to harmonize, opposing impulses -- murky tones with exuberant color, graphic iconography with blurry intervals, playfulness with poignancy."
This small, very rare exhibition of paintings described by Grace Glueck of The New York Times as "delicate, poetic paintings", will include works made by MacIver during the ten years she lived and painted on the dunes of Provincetown including: "Provincetown Shack",1934," Procession of Small Beings",1938, Penny Candy", 1939 (described in ARTnews as "dreamy ­ a true confection",) and "Finit" , 1939, (also described in ARTnews as "abstract and leaflike forms that lurk underneath horizontal veils of deep color whichŠ(they) have a hallucinatory glow of a different, eerier sort.), "Decalcomania", exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and painted on actual wood from her dune shack, plus several mixed-media drawings from her sketch book. Her work reflects the melding of the magic of the Cape, especially the magic of the dunes day and night, with the magic inherent in MacIver¹s way of seeing the world around her.
In this exhibition viewers will have a unique opportunity to experience the Cape through the eyes of a deeply poetic and original artist. As Pierre Matisse (son of Henri Matisse) recognized more than half a century ago, "MacIver¹sŠ enchanting hieroglyphics have the look of innocence but the power of knowledge." (Greben, ART News) Loren MacIver wrote in 1946: "My wish is to make something permanent out of the transitory. Certain moments have the gift of revealing the past and foretelling the future. It is these moments that I hope to catch."

ROBERT HENRY

Recent Paintings
A Robert Henry exhibition is always an exciting adventure in paint and visual impact. He works with symbols that move from the most abstract to a pulsating narrative. Both abstract and figurative, they move almost kaleidoscopically from seemingly pure abstract patterning into grounded, interactive story of the eternal human struggle and primal emotions that comprise the human drama.(Succor IV, for example). Art historian Eileen Kennedy observed:
Henry appears uncategorizable to me. He is an artist statesman of our
age, much as Picasso was/is -or Goya - but he does not confront epic conflict between and within nations in the direct way that they did. He presents the human impulse to harm and heal, in the emotional atmosphere the psychic space that human turbulence creates. His more abstract works seem to me to be what so much of contemporary art is trying to express, the distillation of emotion, the spiritual and psychic space that the times we are living in have created. Looking at a few of his abstract paintings, I could not help but think of the "weight" of the world that now bears down on all of us who are conscious or attempting to be. Meeting Bob Henry, for me, is like meeting the gentlest of prizefighters. He grapples, grapples with the heavyweight philosophical concerns of our times.
Several of these new paintings contain an iconographic horse with rider, the symbol-shape of horse rendered by artists since cave paintings. Of this horse, Henry explains:: "In dreams the horse carries us into the future. This is about the future - this is where we're going." A few of his smaller abstracted paintings ("Untitled" and "The Weight of the World") are about weight, gravity, breath. "¹Untitled¹ is like an inhale, starting at the top ­ it is fullness and sadness," he explains." Like life.
"My paintings come from my sub-conscious," he has said on many occasions. " I don¹t start with meaning. I don¹t decide on an idea and then illustrate it. The image appears through the process of working, mostly in drawings. An image comes to me and I develop it. The meaning of the image is the image. The paintings have to do with anger, frustration, joy, aloneness, togetherness, power, or lack of power -- mine, or others. Berta Walker likes to call me a "Philosophical Expressionist" as I am expressing my feelings about myself, other people, my reactions to life, relationships and events in the world."
Henry's paintings are often serious, and the subjects as varied as all human emotions: sad, angry, hopeful. Couples, aloneness, dancing with spirits, sunning, swimming, often in isolation. Many would suggest that they reflect Henry, the person, but in fact, as Henry himself has said over the years, he is actually a very happy, easy-going person. But the state of the world, the daily emotions and pressures of life, are not his to ignore.
Over the past four years, as President of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, he has learned a bit about politics and finances as he¹s helped guide the Museum on its journey of renovation and expansion.
Henry and his wife Selina Trieff were featured in an article in the Provincetown Banner written in 2001 for which Sue Harrison won the coveted first place award for "her compelling writing style." And recently, a full-length feature video was released about the life and painting careers of Henry & Trieff.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1933, Henry received his BA at Brooklyn College, studying with Ad Reinhardt and Kurt Seligman. In the early 50¹s, he spent three years studying with Hans Hofmann in New York and
Provincetown. He was a teacher at Brooklyn College for a numbers of years, and has lectured widely in America, Japan, and China. His work has been presented in many one-person exhibitions, including Provincetown's original East End Gallery and The Group Gallery, as well as in numerous museums across the country and internationally. He has exhibited at BWG since 1991.

ELSPETH HALVORSEN
Recent Constructions

Viewing ELSPETH HALVORSEN¹s box constructions is a lot like a walk in the moonlight. What we know ­ or think ­ to be true in the hard brightness of daytime reality dissolves into an amorphous space of multiple possibilities/perspectives in the tradition of Joseph Cornell in which a container becomes the stage for what Boston Globe art critic Cate McQuaid calls "an insinuating abstract narrative. In Halvorsen's case, those narratives call on the cosmos, referring to tides and planets and a sense of universal balance." In another article, McQuaid wrote: "Halvorsen constructs boxes from wood and glass; they contain galactic meditations. She balances expansion and containment, liberty and boundaries, filling her work with found objects gathered in surrealist assemblages. "My work has been about the wars we've been in," referring to her work "Taliban" or "Collateral Damage." In "Lullaby and Goodnight" (2003-05), Halvorsen juxtaposes the New York Times photograph of a woman in Sherbertoo, Afghanistan, with her grandchild after the Taliban attack of 2001 with the familiar Brahm¹s Lullaby creating a disquieting musical sculpture about the human consequences of war. The latest assemblages continue to create the sense of miniaturist surrealistic stage sets - or even temples - wherein her repeating symbols of moon, sphere/egg, mirror/reflecting surface, ladders and architectural framing, draw our attention psychologically inward. This is her Tarot deck and each work reflects a different cast of her iconographic tools.
Debbie Forman. features editor of the Cape Cod Times wrote about Halvorsen's work: "Light is always an active element in Halvorsen's constructions. She likes the idea of ambiguity and mystery, and her work inspires a myriad of thought. Through her box constructions, the artist forms a bond with the viewer, sparking an array of associations and ideas, which, like the light, reflect back and forth on her work."
In these new works, Halvorsen has introduced some "objects" that she's had for years (the wooden figure in "Lullaby and Goodnight".) Talking about sources of objects, she says, "people give me things, even mail them to me," which she keeps for long periods and utilizes when they¹re called for." Halvorsen, like her Mother and Grandmother before, and her daughters and her own two daughters, has been making art since she was a very young child. She knew at an early age she would devote her life to being a serious and professional artist. With the exception of the 50s and early 60s when her creative spirit focused on raising her two artist-to-be daughters Tabitha and Stephanie, she has made art daily. She was instrumental in organizing the much-heralded artists cooperative RISING TIDE GALLERY.
Raised in Purdy¹s, N.Y. (50 miles from NYC in Westchester County) Elspeth and her husband ,painter Tony Vevers, moved to Provincetown in 1955, living here year-round until 1964; after that they lived in Provincetown for the summers every year until Tony retired in 1988 and then became year-rounders again. At 75, Halvorsen continues to work daily on her art in her studio/home in Provincetown that was once the home of Mark Rothko.

NEXT GROUP OF EXHIBITIONS: August 12 ­ August 21. Salvatore Del Deo, paintings; John Kearney, bronze sculpture; Nancy Whorf, paintings; Provincetown Masters: Oliver Chaffee, Edwin Dickinson, Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, Karl Knaths, Blanche Lazzell, Ross Moffett, Agnes Weinrich.