“Garden Party” Shows Off Cathy Chin’s Paintings - Inside Art with Michael Rose

“Garden Party” Shows Off Cathy Chin’s Paintings - Inside Art with Michael Rose

For those who relish in paint and paintings, the work of Rhode Island artist Cathy Chin is a delight to experience. On view at Dryden Gallery at Providence Picture Frame in North Providence through March 19, a solo show of Chin’s work focuses on her recent outdoor artworks. Titled “Garden Party”, the exhibition features a fine collection of botanically-focused images by one of the state’s most talented painters. With snow still on the ground outside, the show is a hopeful look towards spring and summer.

Chin’s work bears a distinctive and gestural hand that is immediately recognizable. Her art always, regardless of subject, has a bright and sun-drenched quality. When she turns her eyes to the garden themes presented in her current exhibition, her second solo at Dryden, the results are stunning. The subjects portrayed in the show range from stout potted plants, to meandering strings of beach roses, to architecturally-inclined renderings of outdoor furniture or botanical gardens.

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Originally from upstate New York, Chin comes from a family of creatives. Her father was a photographer, her uncle an architect, her aunt a potter and painter, and Chin describes her mother as a craftsperson with many skills. Chin earned her BFA in illustration and printmaking from the Rochester Institute of Technology and has also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. The artist’s two daughters continue the family tradition. One is a jeweler and the other a prop stylist.

In her work, Chin uses acrylics rather than oils. Where oil paints are thinned with media like linseed oil and have a lengthy curing time, water-based acrylics dry speedily. Sometimes temperamental, acrylics can be tricky to work with, but allow for layering and the quick fabrication of compositions. Chin is incredibly facile with her chosen medium and uses it to its highest potential, making paintings that are full of interesting marks.

 

 

It is difficult to align Chin’s aesthetic with many other painters. Perhaps the closest corollary found in art history is Fairfield Porter, whose simplified representational style defied the orthodoxy of the popular Abstract Expressionist movement. Like Porter, Chin often leverages a less saturated palette in order to shift viewers’ focus to mark, form, and construction. Reflecting on her painting style, Chin says, “The energy from gesture and brushstrokes is what I am after. I draw with shapes.”

These qualities come across in all the paintings Chin displays in her Dryden Gallery exhibition. Her ability to convincingly construct a morning glory, or a rose, or the shady details of leafy undergrowth with just a few darting movements of her brush is exemplary. With equal levels of giddy paint application and refined restraint, Chin creates decisive snapshots of her world.

 

 

In her “Geranium 1”, the verdant leaves and bright blooms of a potted plant are set off against the cool shadows it scatters on a concrete patio. The top third of the image is dedicated to organic forms and the rest of the composition focuses on a hard surface. The painting is also a masterclass in the subtle use of color to denote spaces and shapes. Another painting in the show, “Seaside”, depicts blue flowers emerging from the shadows cast within tufts of tall coastal grasses. At the uppermost part of the composition the keen observer will find the bright whitecaps and reflections of the ocean’s surface. It is a harmonious and lovely scene.

In addition to the work on view at Dryden Gallery, a quick perusal of Chin’s Instagram page @realandplastic gives art enthusiasts a view into the practice of a prolific painter. As an addendum to the garden scenes available in her solo exhibition, recent works shared online include a series of excellent beachy pictures. Rhode Island is awash in painters of the coastline, but none of them capture it quite like Cathy Chin. Swathes of color and delicately assembled figures evoke hot sand and boisterous beach play.

Back at the gallery, Chin’s “Seaside Roses” and “Seaside Garden 4” explore a similar coastal motif in two ways. In the first image, Chin’s sense for details and layers is evident. In the second, a simpler composition shows off her editorial skill. Both take viewers on a calming trip to a garden. Chin’s paintings are exercises in looking at, and appreciating, the beauty of the natural world. In exploring Chin’s art, viewers will find new ways of seeing and a renewed appreciation for the craft of painting.

 

Cathy Chin’s solo exhibition, Garden Party, is on view through March 19 at Dryden Gallery at Providence Picture Frame at 1350 Mineral Spring Avenue in North Providence. The gallery is open Monday - Saturday from 9 am - 5 pm each day. To learn more, visit www.drydengallery.com. To follow Chin on Instagram, find her at @realandplastic.