William Scott Gallery (439 Commercial St.)
In the back room of the William Scott Gallery, Eila Masur is surrounded by a series of paintings by Christopher Sousa: drooling, snarling, jeering mouths, all based on photos posted on Facebook by strangers. “I like things that are kind of edgy and provocative,” says Masur, an occupational therapist from Brooklyn, N.Y. The paintings “say something about us as a society,” she says. “Like, ‘Why would you want to post this?’ ”
Of all the paintings, Masur likes Not How You Hoped the best. “I actually find it aesthetically pleasing,” she says. “I like the colors.” Where the other paintings are the pink and brown and beige of human flesh, Not How You Hoped is veiled in blue shadow. With the subject’s half-open mouth, “it feels like we’re catching a private moment,” says Masur.
Gallery 444 (444 Commercial St.)
Matthias Lupri was born in Offenbach, Germany, was raised in icy forests in Alberta, Canada, has lived for 35 years in Boston, and has been showing his work in Provincetown for eight years. On Friday night, Gallery 444 hosted an opening of a new pop art series by Lupri: very large oil paintings, the oil layered with a palette knife in sculptural mounds, shiny, gritty, and brazen.
A painting called Mr. Couple of Drinks VIII dominates one corner: against an orange background, a haggard-looking face with mismatched eyes and luscious red lips appears to be trying to act normal. The face could be Lupri, he says, as a self-portrait. But really, the guy could be anyone. “You’re in P’town, you’re like, ‘I’m only gonna go out for a couple,’ you know? And then you end up looking like this.”
All of his paintings are “very tongue-in-cheek,” he says, pointing out that Mr. Couple of Drinks VIII resembles a wine glass full of sangria with his skinny bottle-neck and long, cup-shaped head, his hair like fruit or flowers.
Lupri enjoys painting the way he does, in thick oily constructions. “It’s physical, it’s three-dimensional,” he says. “It’s like a sundial. When the sun changes the light in a room, you’ll see this painting differently every time. Every hour he’s going to look a bit different.”
He enjoys showing his work on Friday evenings in Provincetown. “I love meeting people,” he says. People enjoy meeting him, too, and every character in the gallery, Lupri says. “Everybody gets a chuckle out of Mr. Couple of Drinks.”
Four Eleven Gallery (411 Commercial St.)
“Naya’s paintings are amazing,” says Doug Ritter, an artist from Wellfleet who, in his dark green jacket, appears out of place among the sun-soaked, neon paintings of Naya Bricher on display at Four Eleven Gallery. “They have a modernist geometry, but they’re also representational, very real,” he says.
Ritter especially likes Poolside Donut (How I Learned to Swim). “There’s a really fun sense of play in the objects she’s depicting in these poolside scenes.” At first, he says, because of the scale of the donut in the painting, so huge in the foreground, he wasn’t sure whether it was a pool floatie or “whether I’m an ant looking at a real donut.”
The paintings are “ephemeral and beautiful,” says Ritter. Nearby, Bricher’s paintings of bubbles, which also appear larger than life, add to the whimsy. “There’s a lot of magic here,” says Ritter.
Alden Gallery (423 Commercial St.)
At Alden Gallery, Andy Towle, an artist from Chicago who now lives in Provincetown, is admiring a painting of a place he knows well: Jim Broussard’s Early Spring on Cottage St., a scene just blocks from Towle’s home. “I see Jim out painting all winter long,” says Towle. “I don’t know how he does it, but he captures the light so well.”
The painting is pale and quiet, the trees still mostly bare, the street empty of cars or people. The whole picture glows, says Towle. “Even the shadows are glowing.”
It’s a little clichéd, Towle admits, to talk about the light here. “But it’s true,” he says. “You know that sky if you’ve lived here in the off-season.”
On Center Gallery (352 Commercial St.)
At On Center Gallery, a cluster of admirers has gathered around the work of Jay Maggio: sparkling, jewel-toned paintings of individual trees. Kolby Driscoll, a fundraising consultant for nonprofits from Newport, R.I., especially likes Evening Cool, in which a bright blue tree, with branches reaching the ground, stands like a monarch against a background of glittering purple.
Driscoll is here with her partner and his parents. “We were talking about the texture, the movement of it, the vibrancy of the colors,” she says. “We were told that the artist mixes his paint with linseed oil to give it a little sparkle, which is super cool.”
Nancy Guertin, the mother of Driscoll’s partner and a psychotherapist from Bristol, says, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” The group has Jill Rothenberg-Simmons, co-owner and director of the gallery, lift the painting to the light so that it shines. “It’s mesmerizing, isn’t it?” says Guertin.
“It’s an otherworldly tree,” says Driscoll. “You look at it and you see that it’s had so much life to it. All the stories the tree can hold — you’re feeling that all through this still piece of art.”
