PROVINCETOWN — The DNA residency, situated in a cavernous, barnlike space above the Provincetown Tennis Club, has hosted artists on the Outer Cape since 2012. In previous years it was a gallery run by Nick Lawrence, who now owns the Freight + Volume Gallery in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood and runs the residency for artists from his expansive network to come and work for one or two weeks from June through October. Until now, the public hasn’t had much opportunity to interact with these artists working above the tennis courts in Provincetown’s East End.
In May, Lawrence opened the Readymade Gallery in Orleans, where he is showing works by his artists in residence along with local artists, many of whom Lawrence exhibited over a decade ago at DNA Gallery in Provincetown.
“We find small groups of artists with an affinity — whether they’re from New York, the Cape, or other areas — and get a conversation going,” says Lawrence. The current show, “In Search of Lost Time,” continues through Sept. 30 and brings together two Cape-based artists, Jackie Reeves and Bert Yarborough, with two artists from New York: Will Watson, a 35-year-old painter with his first New York solo show up concurrently at Freight + Volume, and Anthony Haden-Guest, an 85-year-old cartoonist, writer, and socialite.
The exhibition is dominated by Yarborough’s quivering, psychedelic abstractions and Watson’s joyous figurative paintings of childhood memories. These bold, colorful works are tempered by Haden-Guest’s nimble ink-on-paper cartoons and Reeves’s airy figurative paintings. The affinity here is a shared concern with process, experimentation, and play. “Each work is an index of the moment of its making,” states the exhibition text.
At the residency building in Provincetown, Watson speaks about experiencing a sense of joy in his work. He is packing to leave after his two-week stay, but he still has a few paintings on the wall from a series depicting roller skaters.
“My connection to family and fun has always been a part of my artwork,” says Watson. He grew up in Indianapolis and roller-skating remains one of the strongest memories of his youth. On his studio walls there’s a singular female figure in full stride at a skating rink. Another picture shows a group of skaters at the rink. The imagery evokes a feel-good nostalgia, and his manner of painting with hot colors and gestural marks echoes the exuberance of his subject.
Among his paintings at Readymade, Watson also draws on childhood memories in a picture of a picnic — complete with fast food, a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and a kite — and another of young people jumping into a pool. Despite their nostalgia, they’re not saccharine or sentimental. His meaty paint handling and inventive figures rendered in black-and-gold patterns keep the work feeling of-the-moment and about the surface.
He came to the residency on the heels of his debut solo show that opened earlier this month in New York. “It’s been just a dream to have that sort of experience in New York,” says Watson, who moved to Brooklyn a year ago after living and working in Baltimore. The change of pace and scenery afforded by the residency in Provincetown has given him space to keep his momentum while trying new things.
“It’s given me some freedom to mess around and just make stuff,” says Watson. “I can explore and experiment and refine my own process.” On a walk on the beach with his dog, Cleo (who, Watson discovered, does not like the water), the artist picked up a piece of washed-up plywood. “This is perfect,” he recalls thinking. “Why not make something from it?” He hung it up in his studio and added a discarded tennis racket and some found rope to create a sculpture of a basketball hoop. “I’m just playing with it,” he says. “Right now, it’s just a foreign language.”
On the other side of the open studio space, Whiting Tennis is working on a painting based on an abstract drawing he made earlier in his stay. Tennis, who lives in Seattle, first met Lawrence in the early 2000s when he was living in New York. He’s a full-time painter, actively showing artwork on both coasts.
Tennis begins each studio day making drawings, following an automatic drawing methodology that emphasizes intuitive decision-making. He typically works in pastels or charcoal, and uses the drawings as sources for his paintings, which he works on in the afternoons. The drawings loosen him up and present formal ideas to explore in paintings. “The whole thing is about approaching the canvas with as little fear as possible,” says Tennis.
During Tennis’s first residency in 2021 (this is his third go-round), he created 45 drawings. “It was such a gangbuster,” he says. The work fueled two exhibitions, both titled “Provincetown Drawings” — one held at Derek Eller Gallery in New York and the other at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.
He’s not sure what he will do with the work he’s making this year. A few drawings will be given to Lawrence, who requires artists to donate work as a form of payment for the residency. At least two drawings from the morning I visited Tennis had already ended up in the trash, but he’s hoping for some wins to put in an upcoming exhibition at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, Ore. early next year, and he will also have some work in an upcoming exhibition at Readymade with Adam Brent, G Love, and Peter Schenck, opening on Oct. 1.
Whiting finds the combination of work and play conducive to generating new art. He arrives in Provincetown at 8:30 in the morning, driving from Eastham, where Lawrence houses artists, and works until 8 p.m., at which point he often goes to Fanizzi’s for dinner and a glass of wine.
“I jump in the bay every day,” he says, often doing so during an extended lunch break at Angel Food’s. “It’s awesome,” he says.
For Lawrence, Readymade and the residency connects to his roots with DNA Gallery, which he ran as a commercial art venue from 1994 to 2011. “We’re continuing that community feel and building a bridge from the original DNA to Readymade and new members,” he says.
‘In Search of Lost Time’
The event: An exhibition of works by Anthony Haden-Guest, Jackie Reeves, Will Watson, and Bert Yarborough
The time: Through Sept. 30
The place: Readymade Gallery, 11 Cove Road, Orleans
The cost: Free