Hawaiian House Interior
Today’s Painting of the Day is and original acrylic by my sister Camile Fontaine. It is entitled Hawaiian House Interior. The painting is a view from a perfect little beach cottage looking out at the blue Pacific. This cottage must belong to an artist or art collector as there are paintings propped against the wall below the open windows. This piece has to be one of my favorite paintings in the entire gallery. It measures 24″x 18″.
SOLD
Local Girl in Sand
Local Girl in Sand is the final piece that I will be posting of the Edge series by Melinda Morey. It happens to be one of my favorites of the entire collection. I love the subtle colors in her suit! Local Girl in Sand measures 24″x 36″ and is an original oil and alkyd on texturized panel. The piece is priced at $4200. If anyone is interested in seeing other works from the series, I will be happy to email you additional images of what is available.
He Owns a Pit Bull
He Owns a Pit Bull is another piece from Melinda’s new Edge series. Gotta love the “Kauai Boy” tattoo. The piece is an original oil and alkyd on texturized panel and measures 36″ x 24″. The price is $3900.
Dawn Patrol
Today’s Painting of the Day is from Melinda Morey’s Edge series. In this painting a surfer is out in the morning “checking the waves”. Perhaps he is standing in awe of a massive winter swell on the north shore, or disappointed that he used yet another sick day from work and the waves are “junk”. Either way, this is a fabulous piece from Melinda’s new series.
The painting measures 40″x 30″ and is an original oil and alkyd on panel. The price is $5200.
No Man's Land
Today’s Painting of the Day is the third I’m showing in a series of new works by Melinda Morey entitled “The Edge”. This painting is an original oil and alkyd tryptic entitled No Man’s Land. Each individual panel measures 18″ x 12″. The artist intended for the piece to be hung close together so that would make the length 36″-37″. The reason for this is that the edges of the center panel are painted red, which reflects off the sides of the other two pieces. The middle piece is slightly shallower so that one can clearly view the sides of the other two paintings. The middle piece has a great deal of texture in the gesso and the flanking pieces have only a minimal amount. No Man’s Land is selling for $4200.
Keeping it Afloat
Today’s Painting of the day is another of Melinda’s Edge series. It is depicting a typical scene at one of Kauai’s gorgeous beaches: a tourist couple with their baby in the water. How do I know it is a tourist couple? The elastic waistband and sunburn gave it away. Melinda has put a slight pink tint on the man’s back and the lady’s shoulders.
The Piece is and original oil and alkyd on wood panel and measures 24″x 30″. The price is $3200.
Floating
I am very excited to have in the gallery a new collection of paintings by Melinda Morey. These pieces were part of a show at the Contemporary Museum on Oahu earlier this year. I am also honored to consider Melinda a dear friend. We got to know each other quite well several years ago when we had art galleries practically next door to one another (hers was “Vintage Aloha”). It was at that time that I developed a deep respect for her talent as an artist. Two years ago Melinda made the difficult decision to close her shop and focus on her paintings and her beautiful son, whose image frequently appears in her work. I was thrilled when she decided to allow me to represent her on Kauai. That decision to focus strictly on painting has certainly paid off with the creation of her newest series of paintings, “At the Edge”.
I feel it best to directly quote the brochure from The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center to best describe the show:
“At the Edge: New Paintings by Melinda Morey
Having moved from Kauai to New York and Back again, Morey’s recent works are reflections on these seemingly disparate worlds. Yet during a visit to New York last year the artist noted similarities, ‘I realized that the same palpable energy that exists in urban settings is also found at the beach. It is different in some respects, but the whole gamut of human experience exists there too.’ This inherent energy on the street corner and at the shoreline, is an underlying theme in Morey’s newest work.
In one series, Morey captures young men, mostly from the back, on the street and at the beach, ‘I see similarities between surf and hip-hop cultures…there is the public image, the attitude and identifying attire but there is also the activity…This activity is a proving ground for kids, mostly males at the edge of adulthood. I see it as a rite of passage and it fascinates me.’
Morey is equally interested in the feeling of absorption that naturally occurs at the shoreline. In pieces such as, Local Girl in Sand, Hands, and Keeping it Afloat, Morey captures people immersed in the simplest activities of playing with sand, floating with loved ones and watching the ebb and flow of the waves.
Captured unaware by the artist’s camera, Morey’s subjects are painted without the environment directing our focus to the human experience, ‘Ultimately it is a moment experienced by a body, and it is how we inhabit ourselves that interests me.’
From the island of Kauai Melinda Morey received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona in 1998 and her Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey in 2002. She also studied scenic art at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico as well as painting and illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Her work can be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; and the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.” -brochure from The Contemporary Museum. Show organized by Curator of Exhibitions Inger Tully.
The painting of the day today is Floating. The subject, which happens to be the artist’s son is floating in the water on a calm day at Waiohi assisted by a pair of green “swimmies”. The piece measures 36″ x 48″ and is an original oil and alkyd on texturized wood panel. The asking price is $7200.
I have been quite behind on keeping up with the blog, I must apologize for this. The new gallery has been overwhelming! We just celebrated our grand reopening in May and had a private blessing ceremony. Whatever that Hawaiian priest did during the blessing worked. I have never been so busy! I just want to take a moment to thank all my loyal clients that have been coming to visit me in Hanapepe all these years, starting when I was in my first (and very tiny) space. I could not have this beautiful gallery now if it wasn’t for all of you. I also want to thank my artists that have stood by me and had faith in the gallery. You are an amazing bunch and I venture to say the most talented in Hawaii. Without further adieu, I will post some before and after photos of the gallery.
This was the exterior of the gallery in December of 2008. Many of you who are familiar with Hanapepe will remember Timespace gallery. The gallery was owned by the late Antonio Arellanes and was a well respected contemporary art gallery.
Old Timespace Gallery in Dec 2008
After several months of scraping, patching, and painting this is what the exterior of the gallery currently looks like:
We are far from finished with renovations. We will next turn our attentions to the front “lawn” and put in a new pathway. I also hope to have a bench built to sit atop the concrete pad that once held the old gas pumps. My building was the first Chrysler dealership on the island, back in Hanapepe’s Heyday. It was also a bakery and a gas and service station. It now makes a pretty great art gallery.
