We are delighted to announce the opening of Summer Selects, featuring 15 painters and photographers, some exhibiting with SEFA for the first time and many regular Gallery artists. The exhibition remains on view through September 9. Summer Selects marks an important milestone for SEFA, as we celebrate 5 years in business last month and look forward to an exciting roster of exhibitions, fairs and events next year.

Taking stock: During the five years, we have curated, participated in or hosted 27 exhibitions at West 90th St.,10 exhibitions off site in galleries, corporate offices and restaurants, 7 international art fairs in NY and Miami, 4 salons with Vica Miller Literary Salons, 3 fundraisers, 2 lecture panels and 1 poetry salon.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS IN SUMMER SELECTS
The 15 painters and photographers chosen for Summer Selects are a mix of represented and other artists, some showing with SEFA for the first time.

Painters
Pastel artist Angela A’Court continues to redefine still life with her outsized proportions and surprising color. A transparent vase is filled with blood red roses in Sfoglia and a simple houseplant dominates in Grey Green Leaves.

Charles Buckley’s penchant for a 1950s aesthetic is seen in The Perfect Housewife, a colorful four-panel work, and Diver, showing a female diver moving across three brightly painted blue panels. In London Bridge the fun-with-Dick-and -Jane-like children play against a striped rainbow background.

David Collins, showing with SEFA for the first time, presents two circular paintings in strong saturated color and featuring the artist’s characteristic navigational arcs, trajectories and waveforms, inspired by a childhood surrounded by his engineer father’s tools and maps.

Gallery newcomer and Midwesterner Lisa Fellerson applies pinks and lavenders with a variety of techniques—dripping, rubbing and scratching—to construct her appealing abstractions.

James Isherwood is represented by three new works, each marrying geometry and architecture with hints of foliage against flattened shapes and patterned surfaces. A bright glow from interiors or windows adds tension and surprise to the dark blue paintings.

Painting en plein air and in her characteristic expressionistic style, Rachelle Krieger gives us Sky Against Rocks III and a recently completed triptych in similar blues and grays, in which she explores air and breath.

Korean artist Jongwang Lee presents Life and Consolation, rendered with his signature mix of resin, pigment powders and acrylic, and resulting in jewel like creations in tones of retro aqua blue and a hazy lavender.

Painter and actor Deirdre O’Connell continues to explore the emotional and dramatic landscape of her beloved playwright Anton Chekhov in her highly articulated and beautifully embellished paintings, made with glitter, gold leaf, acrylic and collage.

In her ongoing examination of abstraction Liane Ricci’s newest work melds large,
amorphous forms with elements of flora and fauna in unusual mixes of earth
tones, bright blues, oranges and stark white.

Japanese artist Fumiko Toda moves seamlessly between painting and printmaking in her mixed media work. Toda gives us a rich cityscape in The Night Before and it’s rural counterpart in Looking Up.

Israeli born artist Shira Toren is represented by two paintings in her recent Cluster series. Using her signature Venetian plaster with pigment, Toren builds up her compositions of clusters of grapes exploring rich texture and vibrant color.


Photographers
Andrea Bonfils presents mixed media works from her recent underwater series. Bonfils starts with black and white photographs of model Emily and works over them with encaustic, resin and paint. The result is a romantic, otherworldly quality.

The pair of swimmers in black and white silver gelatin by Lisa Friedman lounge and play in the surf. One senses the chill and exhilaration of the churned up waves, while the subject’s joy is infectious.

Maria Passarotti’s large digital c prints are taken with long exposure times, resulting in amazing detail and clarity. In Waiting, a pregnant Passarotti does just that, as she gazes through a window. In 39 Edward Street, she is glimpsed in multiple images, clad in a trench and mysteriously exiting the photograph.

These pictures of icebergs, which eerily reference beached animals, were taken at the Jökulsárlón lagoon in Iceland. They are part of Carolyn Monastra's new project The Witness Tree in which she is photographing landscapes that are being affected by climate change.

For information contact: Susan Eley: 917.952.7641
susie@susaneley.com | www.susaneley.com