AMZehnder Gallery (25 Bank St. No. 3)
Kate McConnell, who splits her year between Provincetown and Washington D.C., picks out a piece from Lorrie La Pointe’s 21 “Emotional Landscapes.” Each oil painting is only six by eight inches, but McConnell, an artist herself, notes their magnetic quality.
“I’m really attracted to this piece,” she says. “The subtlety of the water and the gorgeous sky — it’s so much like this place.”
The painting glows with smudged purples, blues, greens, and oranges. “The scale is teeny,” McConnell says, “but there’s something about the serenity that is appealing to me.”
Cove Gallery (15 Commercial St.)
Helene and Michele Cohen, mother and daughter, admire Kimberlee Alemian’s Light Fraction and Director’s Chair inside the Cove Gallery.
“The director’s chair is sort of electrifying because of the blue,” Helene says. “It’s an empty chair, but you feel that somebody’s waiting for something. It startles you. You walk by it, but then you come back again to take a look.”
“It’s as if the chair is in conversation with the viewer,” adds Michele, who works as a curator for the architect of the Capitol in D.C. “There’s almost a false horizon. There’s the horizon of the ground, and then there’s the sea. In some ways, the chair is mimicking that horizon.”
As the pair walk away from the painting, Helene gets in a last word. “That chair does pull you in,” she says. “As soon as you’re ready to fall off the paper, that chair pulls you in.”
Celeste Fine Art Gallery (75 Commercial St.)
At the Celeste Fine Art Gallery, Celeste Woodes Koper looks at her painting Lieutenant Island View From Catboat Road.
“I love the fact that it glows,” Koper says. “I love all the different colors in it. I have a lot of paintings in here that are just blue and white.”
In the painting, rivulets of yellow highlight the light-blue water of the wetland. That same yellow illuminates the cloudy sky.
Koper does almost all of her painting outside, in front of her gallery, using reference photos or her imagination. “A lot of people see me outside and then come into the gallery,” she says.
She feels that her presence out on the street eliminates some of the pressure to buy something that people might feel inside the gallery. “It’s nice to be able to meet new people,” she says, “and introduce them to me and my dog, Georgie.” The small terrier, named after Georgia O’Keeffe, dozes in a plush bed next to Koper’s desk.
LAHA at the Barn (326 Main St.)
At the LAHA reception for William Papaleo’s oils, pastels, and watercolors, Joe McLoughlin has trouble deciding which piece to remark upon. “I really like all of them,” he says.
After a moment, his attention lands on Mary’s Pond Evening, Wellfleet. “I like how the sky is turning to sunset,” he says. “There’s a little bit of pink and purple in there. It’s really beautiful.”
The painting, blurred and hazy, gleams with a transitory light. For McLoughlin, who grew up in Eastham and now lives in Wellfleet, the piece evokes familiarity and warmth. “It’s a peaceful feeling,” he says.
Jeff Soderbergh Gallery (11B West Main St.)
Karen Gausch, who lives in Boston and Wellfleet, was walking around town when she recalled that Tom Deininger’s Bee was up in the Jeff Soderbergh Gallery. Gausch gazes at the sculptural piece, made from recycled materials.
“It’s very complicated,” she says. “Bees are very well known in the world now. They’re getting a lot of attention for their fragility and the way they keep us running.” Glistening with wire and plastic netting, the bee seems alive.
Moving on, Gausch points out Carl Dimitri’s Strayhorn. Directly next to Bee, the piece offers a contrast. “There’s so much to look at in it,” Gausch says. “There’s a lot of imagery, a lot of iconic graphics. It’s curious to me how he chose these things.”
The work looks like a graphic novel, she adds. “I’m just trying to figure it out,” she says. “What is the connection between all of these objects? What is he trying to do here?”
