Please join us at our opening reception for Suzanne M. Packer and Kate Nelson on Friday, August 18th at a “Meet The Artists” 5 pm-7 pm. Refreshments will be served outside in the front garden (weather permitting) . Or, please stop in at the gallery for a Preview of the exhibit, on August 18th, 1 pm-4 pm or anytime 1 pm-5pm Thursday-Monday (or by appointment) through September 13th to see the exhibit.
We are thrilled to be showing the work of two highly regarded abstract painters in one colorful exhibit, Cape Cod artists Kate Nelson and Suzanne M. Packer August 17th- September 13th as part of our season series, “Color Connections 2023”.
Also on display will be work by Richard O. Perry, Hollis Fortune, John Howard, Georgene Riedl, Alla Zbinovsky, Leslie Kramer, Ellen C. Davies, Roe Osborn, Heather Pilchard, Barbara E. Cohen and Sally S. Fine in the the other gallery rooms.
About KATE NELSON:
Statement
Color happens in the moment we’re looking at it. It happens in real time. Like music. Like jazz.
Jazz was born in passion, nurtured by musical structure and grown by improvisation. Painting for me is like jazz — disciplined yet free, spare yet full, within a rich tradition yet achingly personal.
I function with minimal premeditation, like a jazz musician. I work from intuition, from impulse, using physi- cal reflexes honed in hard physical labor and senses sharpened by a life in the outdoors, attuned to the mer- curial temperament of Mother Nature. I work to escape the illusion of linear time; color and gesture trans- port me, the way I’m transported by the crashing surf at the shoreline. They have for me the same cleansing meditative power.
Biography
Painter Kate Nelson is drawn to and moved by the outdoor life.
She has studied at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (there influenced by Chuck Close, Keith Hollingworth, and John Grillo), at Massachusetts College of Art, at Haystack Mountain School on Deer Isle, Maine and worked in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Her work is in the permanent collection of the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA; the Cahoon Museum in Cotuit, MA and in numerous corporate and pri- vate collections, including Sony and Pfizer USA, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and Cape Cod Healthcare.
Nelson creates her lyrical abstract works in her barn-studio in Brewster on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
ABOUT SUZANNE M. PACKER: :
Suzanne M. Packer, is the recipient of the Cape Cod Museum of Art’s 2018 Artist Muse Award honoree for outstanding contributions to the Museum and art community. Packer was the first Director of the Cape Cod Museum of Art. She now serves as Honorary Trustee and is the Volunteer Archivist.
She exhibited her first work in the San Francisco Museum of Art when she was five years old. Her work has since been exhibited and collected from New England to California, Greece, and Pakistan. She has been honored with numerous one-person exhibitions, including the Cahoon Museum of American Art, 1997, the Sparrow House Museum,1999 and two at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, ”Spanning The Years: A. S. Packer & Suzanne M. Packer, 2007” and “Cape Waters Abstracted, 2018””
Packer served for nine years on the Founding Board of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, is an active member of TWENTY-ONE IN TRURO and a Past President of the Cape Cod Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. For five years she co-ordinated the Creative Arts Center Festival of the Arts in Chatham. She is a past member of the Printmakers of Cape Cod and for many years taught classes in painting and white-line print making.
Known for her colorful still life oil paintings and white-line woodblock prints, she now shows abstract oil paintings which have been inspired by her association with the TWENTY-ONE IN TRURO artists and their week of retreat in Truro exploring the Outer Cape landscape and water “Once you know the subject well the abstraction follows.”
Her paintings are in private and museum collections including the Cahoon Museum of American Art, the Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
For a peek at Suzanne M. Packer in her studio:
https://youtu.be/KVijO-nknb8