AMZehnder Gallery (25 Bank St. #3)
At AMZehnder Gallery, Provincetown-based artist Pete Hocking, whose work is also currently hanging on the walls, takes a long moment to consider Patte Ormsby’s Cathedral; His Wonders in the Deep. “One of the things I love about Patte’s work,” he says, “is that it’s specific about place but also cosmic.”
Ormsby’s show “Great” centers on Wellfleet’s Great Island. In Cathedral; His Wonders in the Deep, the rough topography at the bottom of the canvas transitions into what Hocking calls a vision of “universal cosmology” at the top. A star-speckled, billowing galaxy, infinite and deep and undefinable, it could easily be the sea.
If he took the painting home, says Hocking, it would go in the living or dining room, somewhere with enough space for viewers to keep their distance from the work or get close. “That’s the thing about the painting,” says Hocking. “It’s this large world, but there’s also such beautiful detail that it makes you want to lean in. It’s vast and intimate at the same time.”
Burdick Gallery (25 Bank St.)
At Burdick Gallery, Ride or Die by Caleb Oakland has caught the attention of artist and photographer Laurence Sachs, who also teaches English as a second language in a New York City public school.
It’s an abstract composition, alive with texture. The color black, applied like thick smoke over the canvas, should dominate the piece — but instead, it’s the red ladder going straight up that “sticks out at you,” says Sachs.
Normally, he’d say the piece is too dark. “But this works.” A touch of orange and yellow in the bottom left corner “could be someone’s back yard in the distance. Or it could be a campfire.
“I just like it,” he says. “Damn, that’s a good interpretation of a ladder going up to the second floor.”
Blue Heron Gallery (20 Bank St.)
At the Blue Heron Gallery, eight-year-old Lila Pansewicz from Driggs, Idaho is standing with her head tilted up as if she’s a flower following the sun.
The sun, in this case, is Bouquet, a small woodcut by her grandfather, Jerry Geier. Bouquet takes the form of a classic still life but feels warmer than most: bright flowers, carved in rounded strokes, burst from the top of a soft-looking blue vase.
Pansewicz looks as closely as she can — the piece is mounted above her head — and takes note of what she sees: “It has all different kinds of flowers and animals on the vase, and a flower on the table. It’s surrounded in black.”
It’s a joyful piece. But the sight of a vase of flowers reminds Pansewicz of less-than-happy times: “It makes me feel like I’m at a restaurant,” she says, “and my parents are yelling at me to sit down and not play around.”
Cove Gallery (15 Commercial St.)
James Mastrostefano, a nurse practitioner from Warren, R.I., takes his time choosing his favorite piece at Cove Gallery. In the end, he can’t resist the pull of Judith Shahn’s Red Sunflower, White Pot.
“Some still life is too still,” he says. “This is not.”
Red sunflowers explode from a solid gray pitcher. The whole thing is bright against the dark green background — but on a closer look, every color is dark and deep, and, says Mastrostefano, “not drab.”
Some of the other paintings in the gallery are too rigid, he says. But Red Sunflower, White Pot isn’t trying to replicate a photo and is whimsical without being cartoonish.
“The idea of movement throughout it is really nice,” says Mastrostefano. “It doesn’t feel stuck.”
