December 2011 Featured Artist

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December 4th - January 1st

Opening Reception: December 4th, 12pm - 5pm
fused with Jazz and Wine Brunch

Meet the Artist (see below)

Art Raffle (see below)

click here for artist's website

Old York Cellars presents local painter Materese Roche as our December artist in residence. Many of you may be familiar with Roche's work from her numerous regional exhibitions including at her gallery, Artist's Gallery, in Lambertville. Much of Roches work is defined by picturesque landscapes, brilliant colors, atmospheric lighting, and an overall visual intensity. Old York Cellars provides a fitting backdrop as it mirrors many of these qualities. In fact, some of the work in the exhibition is inspired by the vineyards gorgeous landscape. Alongside older works, there will be new works on display for the first time.

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Passing Storm, oil on linen, 20" x 20" Three Amigos, oil on linen, 11" x 11"

Artist Bio

As a child, Materese remembers pouring through art books and being entranced with two telling paintings, Thomas Gainsborough’s, The Blue Boy, and Pierre Renoir’s, Dance at Bougival. One painting powerfully representational; the other emotionally stirring: a combination she would strive to mesh as an adult artist.

Classically trained in highly representational art, she understands and considers all of the technical aspects of painting one learns as a student, yet in her work there is a luminosity that is impossible to teach. Her decidedly crisp and technical still lifes seem in direct contrast to her atmospheric whispery landscapes.

To Materese, it is not about painting the still life as she sees it or capturing the meadow at a specific moment, instead her interest lies in the essence of these subjects. She is fascinated by the minutiae of angles, as well as the contrasts between the clarity and blur of nature. She seeks to incorporate all of her senses into her paintings; the feeling of air on her skin, the smell of salt air, the quiet in her studio, and it is this integration that makes her work distinct.

In a world where so much mystery has been explained and technology encroaches upon us, Materese has a clearness of vision that lets her continue to search, not for the answers, but for universal truths. It is through her paintings that one can discover what she has found.

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