There are three artists sharing the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House, but April M. Rimpo, Jerry Prettyman and Floyd Roberts do not share much beyond the gallery space. They work with different mediums, subjects and styles.
Rimpo's watercolors often deal with the interplay between people and nature. In "The Beach," the six people shown on a beach wield buckets and shovels that suggest they're searching for what presumably will become a seafood dinner. They're so small relative to the rest of the seashore, however, that their exact activity and, for that matter, their exact appearance remain somewhat indistinct. The quiet nature of this scene is reinforced by a solitary sailboat at rest in the calm water behind these beachcombers.
Although the watercolor "Vineyard Life" is set much further inland, it establishes a similarly quiet mood. It depicts an old stucco farmhouse that's set within a landscape that's barely defined through melting green washes of watercolor. There are several farm workers toiling in that gentle landscape, but they're so tiny and so far away that they're nearly swallowed up by the pastoral landscape.
Rimpo gets much closer to our part of the world with the acrylic and watercolor "Making a Difference." It presents colorful cherry blossoms as the central pictorial feature, with the Washington Monument in the background and the inevitable crowd of tourists in the foreground. It's telling that some of these springtime visitors are wearing pink shirts, because that's the operative color in this image.
People and flowers also figure into the watercolor "Flower Vendor." It's a close-up view of a woman holding a floral bouquet whose predominant colors are red and pink.
Colors possess a more overtly jazzy energy in Prettyman's acrylic paintings. In fact, jazz often becomes the overt subject matter.
In "Monk's Mood," the darkly silhouetted outline of the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk is instantly recognizable owing to his distinctive hat and pointed beard. Also, he's wearing a black jacket, black tie and white shirt that attest to his monastic seriousness as a performer.
This painting has Monk's profile set a midst an abstracted composition comprised of brightly colored geometric shards that seem as lively as a musical composition.
Similarly, "Do Your Thing" depicts a jazz trio whose vigorous performance style is further reinforced by the assertively colored geometric shapes surrounding them.
Prettyman's abstract tendencies mean that even his sharply outlined human figures are presented in a reductive manner that takes them down to a near-cubist essence. In "Emerging Voices," the outlined figures are a busy lesson in geometric forms as much as in portraiture.
Roberts is represented by floor-standing metal sculptures that evoke human and animal subjects. These sculptures are made out of tightly interwoven strands of copper that occasionally support larger metal pieces.
The animal forms include a horse, a wolf and a goat; the human forms include a "Basket Weaver" whose occupation is a reminder that such sculptures themselves have a woven quality. This seated basket weaver wears African beads, serving as a reminder that the artist's wire-reliant sculptures have stylistic links back to African art.
April M. Rimpo, Jerry Prettyman and Floyd Roberts exhibit through June 9 at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House, 10400 Cross Fox Lane in Wilde Lake Village in Columbia. Call 410-730-3987.