In the Eye of the Beholder: Works on Paper: Denice Bartels, Jennifer Celio, Mary Mallman, Elizabeth Patterson

The impulse to draw is markedly different from the impulse to paint.  Innate in the materials, pencil, graphite or Conte crayon on paper, is a sense of mutability even delicacy.  Lines can be erased or blurred or reinvented with relative ease.  The scene depicted is idiosyncratic, an intimate, frequently smaller-scaled expression of images that have taken root in the mind’s eye of the artist.

Given the strong visual enticements of Los Angeles, it seems entirely reasonable that these four LA-based artists, Denice Bartels, Jennifer Celio, Mary Mallman and Elizabeth Patterson, feature aspects of the local landscape in their work.  Palm trees in iconic silhouette, an ocean’s eye view of water, Ventura Boulevard in the rain and peephole sized telephone poles, all suggest the extraordinary by re-focusing the familiar.  Each with its own story, each rendered with meticulous technique and all entirely real in the eye of the beholder.