The Cooley Gallery, 25 Lyme Street, is exhibiting new work by contemporary artist Ralf Feyl (pronounced “file”). “Here in Friendship” opened Thursday, May 6, on the twelfth anniversary of the artist’s first exhibition at The Cooley Gallery when he was only 21 and a student at the Lyme Academy. The show will run through June 9.
All of the paintings in this exhibition were painted in or around the artist’s hometown of Friendship, Maine. Feyl’s work does not easily fall into any classification. There are aspects of Impressionism, Realism, Transcendentalism and Tonalism in his work but these “isms” exclude the more meaningful aspects in his art. His painting of a mantelpiece in an old cabin awash in afternoon light or of an open pantry door in the fading summer sun or a slash of evening red on a gray winter horizon refresh the notion that looking is not always seeing and real soul-enriching beauty can be captured in fleeting moments and in deceptively mundane subjects.
“‘Here in Friendship” is a varied and exciting body of work. There’s mastery in Ralf’s work, a sense of harnessed intuition, something akin to a Chinese brush painter who has mastered characters,” remarked Jeff Cooley, gallery owner. “The paintings evoke Maine but they say more about a grounded life in times of constant transition.”
This show of more than 30 new landscape and interior paintings depict familiar subjects: the edge of a wood, a doorway, a pantry, a porch. They evoke feelings of home, serenity, solemnity and transition.
For information, 860-434-8807 or cooleygallery.com.