Jane Byers and Mara Marchand share a love of landscapes in an exhibit titled "Friends Painting Contrasts" at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House. Their watercolors, pastels and paintings collectively show their natural enthusiasm for this subject matter.
Byers actually incorporates exclamation points into the names given some of her individual pieces. In "Visit Mt. Vernon!" she depicts cherry trees in full bloom at Baltimore's Washington Monument. It's a springtime floral display serving as a reminder that Washington, D.C., is not the only city that can link George Washington and cherry blossoms.
In a compositional sense, there is a harmonious balance achieved between the cherry trees in the foreground and the marble monument in the background. Similarly, there is a strong sense of compositional structure in "Come to Maine!" Two conifers looming in the foreground provide a sense of pictorial framing for the panoramic view of a rocky seashore in the background.
Those Maryland and Maine scenes have the viewer looking into the landscape, but other works prompt the viewer to look up. Indeed, Byers has a "Look Up!" series in which typically a rural road occupies the bottom of the scene and a huge sky dominates most of the upper portion of the picture. Working variations on this format, there is one "Look Up!" scene set at a golf course; and there's another scene that's all sky, with only a small airplane providing company for the clouds.
Marchand's landscapes are often both overseas and old. In "Village in Italy," the closely spaced stone houses along a rocky ridge seem like natural extensions of the landscape. So old that it's returning to nature, "Church Ruins in France" depicts a stone church that's on the verge of fusing with the surrounding vegetation. A very close view of a very old site is provided by "Old Gate in France," in which the stone and wood don't like they'll remain in place for much longer.
Marchand is a versatile artist in terms of both location and stylistic approach. In works including "Baltic Birches" and "Sedona Cactus," she depicts detailed representations of plant life set against relatively blurry natural backdrops.
Her essentially realistic approach tends to be deliberately selective in these and other works. "Boats Along the Coast of Portugal," for instance, clearly presents beached boats against a mountainous backdrop and yet there's a visually sketchlike appearance to the overall landscape.
That borderline-schematic approach proves to be particularly apt in "The Bison" and several other works inspired by prehistoric cave art. Here one encounters crisply outlined animals set against cave-wall-evocative washes of dull color.
If Marchand gets down to pictorial basics in works such as "The Bison," she leaves realistic representation almost completely behind in works such as "Purple Shadows I" and "II." Instead, there are quasi-organic patches of purple and green that conjure up a sense of nature without directly depicting it.
Jane Byers and Mara Marchand share an exhibit through Aug. 8 at the Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House, 10400 Cross Fox Lane in Wilde Lake Village in Columbia. There is a reception Sunday, June 28, 3-5 p.m. Call 410-730-3987 or go to http://www.wildelake.org.