Double vision

New work by Griffiths and Nelson

by Leon Nigrosh

NEW WORK: CHERYL GRIFFITHS & PETER NELSON At the University of Massachusetts Medical School Lobby, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, through May 31. Inspiration comes from curious places. Cheryl Griffiths gets hers each time she takes her dog for an evening walk on the country lanes of Southborough. Peter Nelson looks out the back window of his Connecticut home. Both artists are able to discern the spectacles of nature, and then create a growing body of captivating images. Currently sharing wall space in the UMass Medical School lobby gallery, Griffiths and Nelson offer an opportunity to share their eloquently rendered observations.

Griffiths approaches her work by first creating tiny oil-stick sketches. After her evening walks, she dashes off images she has seen, with the intention of translating them into larger, more formal paintings. But she soon realized the impossibility of her task and instead began to produce works like Earth, Sky, Tree. Here, she has taken essential elements clipped from numerous sketches and arranged them in a sequence based on colors and spatial arrangements. Silhouettes of birds, trees, and leaves share the composition with clouds, stars, and crescent moons.

Not all of Griffiths's drawings are cut-and-pasted assemblages. Even though they may appear similar, works like her Botanical Garden series are entirely drawn on the page. From a distance they may read as a seamless composition, but up close we can readily discern the vignettes. Her Botanical Garden Tropical Section has richly defined trees and leaves, with aquatic life forms coexisting alongside land and airborne creatures. The Wetlands portion is just as full of lush greenery, seemingly lit from within, but features a single majestic heron in the mirrored waters.

Griffiths is concerned with more than color and formal composition. Much like the artists of the Hudson River School, 100 years earlier, she is worried about the overdevelopment of the land, the shrinking of the natural habitat, and the eventual demise of many species. Her recent drawing California Journal hints at her apprehension. Included among the yucca plants, leaves, and birds in this tan and ochre rendering are segments showing water towers and oil derricks.

Nelson assumes a more pragmatic approach to nature, observing and recording the seasonal changes that occur within his landscape. But rather than producing single representational scenes on canvas, he develops rhythmic visual patterns with tiny framed "windows" on wooden panels. Approaching his Broken Bridge Chronicles much like constructing a musical fugue, Nelson first paints the background panel with pastel tones appropriate to the season, and then arranges small, blank rectangles across the surface. When the arrangement feels right, he affixes the small segments and paints them in, creating small compositions within the greater one.

In his diptych #26 Seasons Crossing, the colors wash from the browns of fall to the whites of winter. Suggestions of trees populate painted windows in the framed windows. In #22 Second January, he implies a diptych by employing two distinct background colors on a single board. #32 Untold Stories remains enigmatic with its flat greens and browns juxtaposed with umber and lavender as bits of trees and roots punctuate the tiny, framed windows.

Nelson's works in this exhibition are variations of this synthesis and can be interpreted and enjoyed from several standpoints. We can delight in the exploration of the ever-changing seasons, and we can become more involved with the intricate artistic investigations of form and design.

As a bonus, more than just eye candy, this exhibition offers viewers a perfect occasion to compare and contrast an extended body of work from two artists, each of whom apply different approaches to the same subject.

The UMass Medical School lobby is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Call 856-2000.