Lily Pad Gallery’s Milwaukee location brings together Gene Costanza and Christopher Groves for Into the Mystic, a show that “encourages exploration through imagination to arrive at newfound perspectives of previously known terrains.” Both artists created dreamlike landscape paintings inspired by their home regions; Groves in South Carolina with its marshlands and forests, and the mountain ranges of Oregon that influence Costanza. While exploring the mystic, each artist dances the line of realism and abstraction.
Christopher Groves, Aspen Honey, oil on board, 48 x 60"
“We’re very excited to start the new year highlighting two incredibly talented and unique artists,” says Kitt Richards, art sales associate and conservator at Lily Pad West. “Gene Costanza and Christopher Groves are enamored with the beauty and power of nature; however, it’s their differences in style and interpretation that makes them so exciting. We look forward to the journeys we’ll take through their paintings, the memories they’ll bring forward and the discussions they’ll foster.”
When thinking about the show title Into the Mystic, Costanza realized “just how mystical the natural world is to me, when presented with the drama of real life landscape images,” he says. In his piece Summer Just Feels Good, the artist pays homage to the summer flower fields in northwest Oregon’s Willamette Valley. “I found an old image of a pastel I did many years ago,” says Costanza, “and thought it would fit well with the theme [of the show]. It was re-created here in oils as a ‘feel-good’ piece. A painting about the joy of summer and warm, long days. It is a rebuke to the past two years of doom and gloom.”
Christopher Groves, Moondance, oil on canvas, 32 x 48"
Costanza will have around six or seven pieces for the show, including other “mystic” works like Aprils Road – A New Morning, also paying homage but to friend and emerging photo artist, April Norman. “April is a coworker from a previous career,” he explains, “and she has graciously given me permission to use any of her images as jumping off points for paintings…It’s a collaboration of sorts. Her eye has a mystic quality, which fit perfectly.”
Having painted classical realism for many years, Groves has been pushing outside these boundaries the last four years, and bridging old and new ideas in the studio. “I want to show a history of my past and present within specified shapes and spaces,” he says.
Gene Costanza, April’s Road – A New Morning, oil on linen, 20 x 40"
Groves will have around eight to 10 pieces to display, exploring the aforementioned space as a visual element. As in Aspen Honey, there is a separation of physical space with the “hierarchy of realism to abstraction within those specific spaces,” the artist explains. “It’s individual spaces defined by a shape (variety of rectangles) within a landscape of aspen trees. Realism, in this case, is the strongest visual space (the honey), surrounded by a stair-step of more abstracted descending shaped spaces. Yet, which space is most interesting? The message is there is beauty in all spaces and genres.”
Gene Costanza, Summer Just Feels Good, oil on linen, 24 x 30"In the piece Moondance, Groves continues to explore the element of space, but in this dreamy scene of a large moon behind tall trees, he plays with the juxtaposition between spaces. “It’s exploring this confrontation of the push-pull of our visual interest between the two objects [the moon and the trees] that move us from negative to positive space within the same painting,” adds Groves. “The message, for me, is that beauty often time lies within the ‘not-so-visually-obvious’ place; beauty is on the inside.”
These mystical beauties will be featured prominently at Lily Pad West from January 1 through February 20, with an opening reception on January 21, from 5 to 9 p.m. —
Lily Pad West
215 N. Broadway • Milwaukee, WI 53202
(414) 509-5756 • www.lilypadgallery.com
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