Exciting New Contemporary Art Featured at the Lionheart Gallery: IMPULSE and PAPER CUTS

Exciting New Contemporary Art Featured at the Lionheart Gallery: IMPULSE and PAPER CUTS

Breathtaking new contemporary art is featured at the Lionheart Gallery through July 3. IMPULSE showcases large-scale abstract paintings by Ashley Chase Andrews that reference history and culture through adventurous mark making and bold lush color. PAPER CUTS, a collection of new compositions by Gregg Welz, highlights geometric shapes and patterns created through intricately cut and folded paper. Visitors are invited to see these exhibitions at the Lionheart Gallery, 27 Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge.

Currently based in North Salem, abstract artist Ashley Chase Andrews was raised in Santa Monica and credits her Californian upbringing with sparking her love of freedom and adventure. “I was never afraid,” she says. “I was a risk taker.” In IMPULSE, she shows large expressive paintings that exude the thrill of discovery in the natural world as well as the internal, private worlds of imagination, emotion, and memory.

Ashley Chase Andrews, Handwriting/ Florida/ Lincoln Road, 2015, 72” x 55”, acrylic on canvas

Inspired by Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andrews begins with unstretched canvas tacked to her studio wall and then draws with charcoal or oil sticks and paints in acrylic or oil. She works big, she works fast, and she spontaneously responds to whatever color or marks she is using at the moment, constantly building up layers of interesting marks, symbols, shapes, and personal messages: numbers, words, foods, places, political events. Like partially obscured graffiti, these are half-covered with more layers of paint so the effect is the odd phrase or recognizable image emerging from fields of line and color. The resulting dreamscapes merge the current with the past, the historical with the present.

Ashley Chase Andrews, Handwriting/ Florida/ Reality, 2015, 69” x 66.5”, acrylic on canvas

These paintings are shown alongside PAPER CUTS, the works of conceptual artists Gregg Welz who cuts and folds drawing paper into repeating patterns, creating gradations of light and cast shadow. “I am drawn to this abstract process as a means of expressing the visual symmetry around me: architecture, water patterns, or stone walls, for instance,” he says, citing Sol LeWitt and Louise Nevelson among sources of inspiration. While he sometimes works in colored papers—rich crimson, Mediterranean azure blue—many of Welz’s recent pieces are minimalist confections of white on white. This art is delicate yet crisp, the patterns graceful and angular, as intricate as a classical symphony and as elegant as pleats in couture fashion. The folds of paper in these three-dimensional works form shadows that make one more layer of pattern and color.

Gregg Welz, Up and Over, 2016, 40” x 40”, mixed media, drawing paper

PAPER CUTS includes works like Up and Over, a perfect square composed of 169 smaller squares, each its own tile of origami-like folds. The detailed shapes Welz has folded into the creamy white paper conjure endless associations: tiny kites, ornate frosting roses, snowy peaks, experimental architecture, spinning pinwheels, scales on a pale fish, or facets in a diamond. Viewers will find something new to contemplate with each look.

Gregg Welz, White Over Orange Pop, 2016, 32” x 32”, mixed media, drawing paper

General Information
The Lionheart Gallery is open Wednesdays through Saturdays, from 11 AM to 5 PM, and Sundays from 12 noon to 5 PM. For more information and directions to the gallery at 27 Westchester Avenue in Pound Ridge, New York, visit www.thelionheartgallery.com or call 914.764.8689.