Tredwell spotlights two Seacoast artists

Changing things up this month, the new Tredwell Contemporary Art Gallery is displaying local artists Katherine Doyle and Gordon Carlisle in two concurrent solo shows.

The formerly white walls of the new gallery in the lobby of One Harbour Place in Portsmouth have been repainted in deep colors that coordinate exactly with the paintings on display through March. This changes everything.

In the middle of winter, a selection of lush paintings by Katherine Doyle makes the gallery feel sultry inside. She is a master of the figure, realistically shaped, casually posed and captured in intimate moments.

The body language and various stages of undress give hints to sensual storytelling, but the narrative remains a mystery. The characters are so comfortable with their bodies and each other that it suggests a relationship, but it’s often unknown whether they are friends, siblings or lovers.

A series of Doyle’s paintings in the building’s main lobby portray people lounging on a blanket with reckless abandonment after a summer afternoon picnic. It’s scenes like these that people miss most this time of year—carefree, long days in the sun.
 
In a few of the paintings, an empty bottle is lying nearby where someone lies sleeping.
The people are hidden in one painting, but the blanket is spread on the grass along with a pink dress and shoes. An old car with the headlights on is parked to the side of the frame. A towering tree looks lit from above, probably by a streetlight because it seems too bright to be the moon.

Doyle has a wonderful way with light. Her paintings could be grouped into different types of light: tree-filtered or water-reflected sunlight and electric indoor light. A couple of the paintings focus on someone under a white sheet glowing by flashlight, as if telling a ghost story. She also uses shadows and dark corners as contrast, and sometimes a second story is hidden there. 

In addition to oil painting, Doyle also works with charcoal and pastels. She is currently based in New Castle but has shown her work widely.   

Gordon Carlisle is a Renaissance man within the visual arts. He creates mixed-media collages, paints and draws portraits in various media, and designs theater sets and commercial graphics. But he may be best known for his awe-inspiring murals, including one in Somersworth that he spent several weeks completing over the summer. He has a studio in Portsmouth’s Button Factory.    

Carlisle’s exhibit on the first floor of One Harbour Place features a diverse array of works, many showing the artist himself in a variety of contexts. “Lawnmower #1: The New House,” for example, shows Carlisle laboriously mowing the lawn of a new house, toiling through the American Dream of home ownership. “Rusted Heart” consists of a real painted guitar wrapped in overalls with a portrait of Carlisle’s face on the neck, personifying the artist as a musical instrument. Other paintings show nature scenes with trees gnawed by beavers and snow-covered boulders. Still other works present Elvis as a divine figure, including “The Good Shepherd,” which shows a haloed King of Rock smiling in Biblical-looking shepherd garb.

Carlisle sometimes begins with a paint-by-number or kitten poster and transforms it into real art with meaning, even if it means laughing at it. His collages are often humorous, but nonetheless poignant. With the juxtaposition of old and new, opposites and impossibilities, he presents his own take on modern life. He challenges stereotypes, religion, popular art, advertising and other mass culture phenomena by putting the unexpected into the expected.

In other rooms and hallways off the main lobby, the gallery is showing paintings and photographs by a number of other artists, including Caleb Stone, Ken Fiery, Richard Morin, Alison Hill, James Karlovich, Dennis Poirier, Cheri Wilkins, Dennis Perrin, Brett X. Gamache and P.T. Sullivan. Gallery owner Ruthie Tredwell has big plans for utilizing her extensive space in the building throughout the remainder of the year and even hopes to show some outdoor waterfront work this summer.

Tredwell Contemporary Art is located at One Harbour Place, at the corner of Bow and Daniel streets, Portsmouth, 603-436-0332.