Christopher Engel
Franklin Engel
Eugenio Cuttica
Charles Wildbank
Joyce Brian
Jorge Silveira
George Wazenegger
Cheti
Hazel Shearer Thomas Gray
Jill Morris
Barbara Pintauro-Lobosco
Nancy Achenbach
Pingree Loucheim
Joan Tripp
Amy Werfel
Richard Udice
Barry Weiser
Rick Gold
Laura Rozenberg
Alan Nevins
Marsha Lipsitz
Jude Amsel
Hadi Toron
Coco Pekelis

Franklin Engel has been immersed in the art making process since the late 1950's, creating drawings, paintings and sculpture, exhibited in venues from New York City to the East End. Directing and designing multi-media theater pieces with his wife - actress, playwright and director Miranda McDermott – produced in venues including the Mercer Arts Center, Provincetown Playhouse, Manhattan Theater Club, Theater East as well as Engel and McDermott's own Off Broadway theatre, New Media Rep in NYC, the energy of Engel's work is born in the fusion of theater and visual art. Whatever medium he works in – designing stage sets, making films, applying paint to canvas, pencil to paper or the figures he spins from wire, wood and found objects, one can always recognize the unique vision of this artist.

Engel's most recent work on exhibit, a series entitled "Figures Around Me," encompasses a selection of pen, ink and graphite drawings as well as mixed media sculptures, remarkable renditions of the human form in its many transformations.

Christopher Engel's immersion in the arts began when he was a child - growing up in the theater and surrounded by the art of his parents. One of his earliest memories is standing in his father's studio mesmerized by the palettes, brushes and paints. "My exposure to my parents multi-media experimental theater pieces, which included poetry, film, photographs, paintings, sculpture and sound compositions, was my early education in the arts," says Christopher. He began exhibiting his work in the mid 1980's in NYC and continued to have exhibits in Paris, Buenos Aires, NYC and the East End. His most recent work on exhibit is from a series called "Mythology," emphasizing the great influence of world mythology on his vision and the inspiration from his study of the work of Carl G. Jung.

Rarely do we get chance to glimpse the work of two generations of artists side by side. Christopher's work is focused on the inner workings or "inner mythologies" of the individual, whereas Franklin's work concentrates on the outer workings. Much as the cubists worked to capture the figure from many different angles, here we see the inner and the outer realities. The artworks complement each other with a similar energy, resonance and origin.

Romany Kramoris Gallery is pleased to announce a group show of paintings by Christopher Engel, Coco Pekelis, and Sister Corita.

Like the annual return of a comet, Christopher Engel's latest paintings are shown at the season's peak.

Inspired by the philosophy of Carl Jung ("Jung has confirmed that the ancient cultures had more realization about our place in the universe, than our current society can even conceive of" from Psychology and Alchemy), the new series of Engel's multimedia works is entitled, "Mythology." The series captures the archetypal origins of myth.

Engel's iconographical figures vibrate in a saturated color palette and in a very kinetic surface texture – to which he plays a counterpoint with evocative and mystical collage elements assembled from the symbolist sphere.

These high-keyed "portraits" cast a real psychological aura. An enlightened and relaxed, stimulated optimism emanates from each of these complexly layered works.

Also being shown are recent paintings of Coco Pekelis, a veritable "Queen of the Bohemians" involved in every type of counterculture milieu of her generation: touring the world with the renowned Bread and Puppet Theater and the Meredith Monk Dance Troupe. She authored a best-seller, Everything I Know, I Learned on Acid.

Taking up painting in 2000, she has enjoyed successes in upstate New York, East Hampton, and at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.

"Portraits," of people or animals are painted in a very idiosyncratic line and impasto in lush garden chromas. The backgrounds are covered with the fantasy thoughts of her subjects. They are altogether bright, quirky, and fun.

Her work has been rudely described as "pagan," but pagan it is indeed—if you consider the worship of the natural world sacrilegious. See her cow portrait, "Goddess in a Tree," and you will recall the ancient sacred memory of the cows in India. Kramoris says, "I thought to show them (Engel and Pekelis) together because they are remarkably compatible. Their bright colors are those of summer, like juicy ripe fruit … combined with the very expressive touch of each … they complement each other with distinct, individual styles.

It will be a jog to the memory to see again the same pieces of Sister Corita with her famous silkscreens advocating social justice and political reform, she became a guru of both the art world and social movements of the 60's. Another guru, Buckminster Fuller, visited her studio and pronounced it "among the most fundamentally inspiring experiences of my life."

Sharing the bright colors and texts, she does make a good companion to Engel and Pekelis.

"The Sweet Life" fills up Sag Harbor's Kramoris Gallery June 30 to July 21, a series of hyper paintings of delectable desserts, candies, cherries and fruits by Charles Wildbank, who is not a realist painter – or rather not entirely realistic. The old saying "every picture tells a story" is certainly true in his case.

Each painting has elements of the fantastic, the anthropomorphic, the divine. Before all else, his paintings are rapturously beautiful – abundantly slow. His stories are sometimes narrative, more often, evocative.

Their great scale places them in the realm of surrealism invoking a sense of wonderment and curiosity, at times even approaching the scientific. His fruits and pastries tell these tales, nostalgically: joie de vivre. Kramoris says: "his paintings are like slices of fresh melon that refresh the soul. They are emotionally kinetic." But it is in his series of ocean waves that he lets loose his technique to immerse us in a surge of cleansing optimism.

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Jorge Silveira likes old objects, especially old wooden objects which he's inspired to mix with acrylic paint and pieces of found rusty metal into monsters and faces. He's also been using other found materials like burlap. "I really like expressing my creativity by finding discarded objects from the forest and the ocean, and turning them into raw and abstract characters or scenes," says Silveira. Coming from Uruguay, a small country in South America, where everything gets repaired and reused such as old cars from the 1940's and refrigerators that get fixed 20 times before they're replaced, it surprises him how much material he can pick up on the beach and in nature that has been thrown away by people. It makes him feel good that he can pick up these objects and give them another life.

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The "Goats of Shelter Island" by resident Joyce Brian are a bit more poetic in her paintings than the scruffy, real thing. Inspired daily by her grass chewing neighbors, each portrait captures a distinct personality. The softened hairy coats and idealic painterly backgrounds convey serenity and warmth.

George Wazenegger once again presents his nostalgic architecture reminiscent of earlier times spent on the seashores by families living a simpler way of life in captivating assemblages. Skies and dunes are painted by hand, as well as detailed, charming little rock gardens and clumps of flowers. No big landscapers here. He depicts images that are slowly disappearing, architecture constructed of clapboard, wood stairs with railings, small decks, 2 over 2 windows, and picket fences. The viewer is happy and content with sunshine and clams for dinner. This simple architecture is all one feels one needs and longs for in viewing his work. "Over the years, his work has become more detailed and more painterly," says Kramoris.

Romany Kramoris Gallery is proudly exhibiting four prominent painters of the "academy," an in-jest, self-named larger group of painters on the East End. These four run the gamut in the realist styles. Featuring: Nancy Achenbach, Pingree Louchheim, Joan Tripp, and Richard Udice.

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