Haven Gallery West in Northport, New York, seeks out “emotionally, intellectually and imaginatively driven, representational artwork that connects the audience and artist with universal axioms and passions. We work with both emerging and established artists who transcend their medium and subjects by exploring the world around them as well as the one within themselves.”Valerie Savarie, The Mystery of Love, hand-cut altered book (The Poems and Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, published by Modern Library 1930), acrylic, watercolor, acryla gouache, thread, metal birdcage door, 7¼ x 4¾ x 7/8"

Erica Berkowitz and Joseph Weinreb have previously asked artists to look to the work of Lewis Carroll for inspiration. Oscar Wilde, which will be shown June 5 through July 4, focuses on the work of the great Irish storyteller. The gallery notes, “Whether it is environment, character, costume, narrative or continuation of a story, we ask that the artist interprets these elements in their own style while simultaneously paying an homage to the author’s works.”Nickolas Tower, The Nightingale and the Rose, watercolors, color pencils, gouache and genuine platinum and gold leaves on paper, 17 3/10 x 11"

Two artists have responded to the short story The Nightingale and the Rose. In the story, a young student is about to lose the love of his life unless he presents her with a red rose. The nightingale sets out to find a rose for the student and finds a rose bush that will give up a flower if she pierces her heart with a thorn and sings through the night while she dies.

Valerie Savarie has cut by hand through the cover of a book to create a vignette of the nightingale, the rose and a cage with text behind. Titled The Mystery of Love, the piece is one from her series of book sculptures. “I seek out a book that will echo my mental vision,” she explains. “Taking the written story within, I reinterpret it into a three-dimensional piece by cutting, sewing and painting (all done by hand without the use of power tools), thus creating a multidimensional collage while still leaving the majority of the book intact.”Jennifer Hrabota Lesser, Of Borrowed Sins, oil, 14 x 11"

Nikolas Tower’s contribution, titled after the story, is a stylized, exotic interpretation of the young woman, the bird and the rose composed of watercolors, color pencils, gouache and genuine platinum and gold leafs on paper. He creates a fantasy world equivalent to Wilde’s story, one he describes as “a world of silent human feelings that cannot easily be expressed in words; a Cosmos in Silence….”Jesús Aguado, Dorian Gray’s WIP, acrylic in cradled wood panel, 16 x 12"

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde portrays a beautiful, vain young man who pledges his soul if his portrait would bear the ravages of aging while he remained young. In Jesús Aguado’s Dorian Gray’s WIP, an artist’s hand continues the subject’s deterioration. A banner flies from a staff reading “caput mortuum…pigment” referring to the color “cardinal purple,” the color of the subject’s coat. Translated from the Latin, it means “dead head,” The useless residue of a chemical action was represented by alchemists as the death’s head shown on the coat’s lapel. —

Haven Gallery West
90 Main Street • Northampton, NY 11768
(613) 757-0500 • www.havengallery.com 

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