Ann Rhoney
Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Water: Photographs by Ann Rhoney and Carolyn Marks Blackwood, on view Wednesday, May 24 through Saturday, June 24. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and by appointment. Please join us for an opening reception at the gallery on Wednesday, May 24 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM.
Water brings together work by two female artists, each of whom approaches her work as a photographer with a strong sense of place and with a painter’s sensitivity to color and light. A native of Niagara Falls, Ann Rhoney draws deeply from the famed waterfall as a source of inspiration, just as the artists of the Hudson River School did a century and a half before her. “She is drawn to the intensity of edges, borders, thresholds, and pending encounters where waters roil, light cascades, and hearts beat faster,” writes Christopher Sweet, Editorial Director at Thames and Hudson, in the essay Studies in Light and Color.
In addition to pigment prints, Rhoney produces gelatin-silver prints that she meticulously paints with oils. Her work can be found in public and private collections across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; the American Scandinavian Foundation, New York, NY; and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, as well as in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Photographer, screenwriter, and producer Carolyn Marks Blackwood works from her studio on the edge of a 120-foot cliff over the Hudson River, from which she observes the patterns in the water created by the play of light and weather. Her photographs transform those vistas into vivid fields of color that, while verging on abstraction, are firmly anchored in the unique spirit and heritage of the Hudson. Like Rhoney’s prints, Blackwood’s photographs are inextricably linked to the traditions of painting; she cites among her influences the abstract expressionist painters of the New York School. Moreover, her work, as well, inevitably calls to mind the artists of the Hudson River School, who were similarly captivated by the river’s protean grandeur. In 2015, Blackwood was featured by Artnet News in its piece Five Artists to Watch: The Photography Edition, which noted, “By playing with perspective, Blackwood pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a landscape photographer, widening the parameters of the genre from the typical vast romantic landscapes to an appreciation for the minuscule and the unseen in nature.”
Blackwood is represented in Los Angeles by Von Lintel Gallery. Her work can be found in the collections of the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT; the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY; and the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; as well as in many private collections. In addition to her work as a photographer, she is a principal partner of Magnolia Mae Films, which has produced, among others movies, The Invisible Woman (2013), Philomena (2013), and the Academy-Award winning film The Duchess (2008).