A special thank you to Aneta Georgievska-Sine, who curated Of Water Too Are the Grasses!
In the galleries: A two-artist show captures undulating images
Also: A photographer’s images gaze outward and illuminate inward, and a painter looks at grass to explore ecological peril and promise.
“There They Were All Along,” by Irene Pantelis: “Of Water Too Are the Grasses” at Studio Gallery.
“Most of the paintings in Irene Pantelis’s “Of Water Too Are the Grasses” are strongly vertical and semiabstract renderings of foliage that stretches above and below a layer of earth. Yet, as the Studio Gallery show’s title indicates, these elegant pictures have a liquid quality. The local artist achieved this by brushing paper with water and then making the image on the wet surface with watercolor, sumi ink and other substances. The pigments mixed with the water, yielding imagery that is soft and seemingly fluid.”
“According to her statement, Pantelis was initially inspired by the lawns of her suburban Maryland neighborhood, but she later thought of her childhood summers in Uruguay’s grassy pampas. Yet, with their muted or all-gray palettes, the pictures aren’t especially summery. They’re more autumnal, although “All Along” depicts a nest of bulblike forms beneath a narrow strip of brown dirt, suggesting the promise of rebirth when the weather warms.”
Desde Abajo by Irene Pantelis
“The show, which also includes a single wire sculpture, depicts grass and its roots on a near-epic scale. Some of the paintings are large, and even the smaller ones amplify simple stalks and roots into parables of ecological peril and promise. In her watery microcosms, Pantelis finds something all-encompassing.”
Irene Pantelis: Of Water Too Are the Grasses Through Nov. 18 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. studiogallerydc.com. 202-232-8734
Review by Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post, November 2023. Thank you!