Earthly Delights

From abstracts to landscapes, a century of artistic tradition is on view.

Comments (0) By Michael Paglia Thursday, Dec 16 1999

Lightfield is the only artist in the show who is from Denver. Her work here concerns the luminous sky, a longtime interest for her. In "October 27th," a 1998 acrylic on canvas, a tree stands on one side in the foreground, and glimpsed to the other side are the indefinite hills and smeary sky of the background.

Mastronardi is a Seattle artist who recalls the countryside of her childhood in Italy in elaborate and meticulous Prismacolor pencil drawings. Though she was born in Italy, Mastronardi moved to the United States as a child, which explains the storybook character of her romanticized scenes.

"Perplexed," by William Vielehr, bronze and aluminum wall sculpture.

"Dakota," by Stephen Dinsmore, painting.

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All of the artists in Harvest reveal in their paintings and works on paper the unlikely but continuing appeal of traditional landscape painting.

Over at the Saks Galleries in Cherry Creek, it's the figural tradition that gets a contemporary workout in Patti Cramer: New Faces...New Places, which runs through tomorrow. The show looks gorgeous in the fancy Saks; Cramer's work is a good fit here.

As usual, Cramer captures a chic urban world filled with fashionably dressed people involved with one another and with their cute dogs. In her signature expressionist style, she models her compositions on Renaissance prototypes, in which the life of the street came together to convey a narrative.

Abstracts, still lifes, landscapes and figure paintings are all alive and well, and here it is, the end of the 1900s.