Toomey Tourell Fine Art: Marilyn Levin: Unnatural Nature

Marilyn Levin: Unnatural Nature

Toomey Tourell Fine Art is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by the artist Marilyn Levin, entitled Unnatural Nature.

Dates of Exhibition: Wedneday, July 1st through Saturday, August 1st, 2009. Reception with the artist: Thursday, July 2nd from 5:30-7:30 PM.

Born in Nebraska, Marilyn Levin has long been a Boston resident, teaching at Tufts University. Ms. Levin’s newest body of work addresses the complex relationship between nature and the contemporary artist. An artist long moved, spiritually and emotionally, by the beauty of nature, this exhibition deals with the issue of human’s eventual destruction of the landscape and the repercussions inherent in its loss.

Coming from a long history of painterly abstraction, the application and process of these works provide an important component to the whole – the surfaces are layered, poured and scraped, often revealing underlying patina by gesture rather than addition. The work’s distortions and reflective color shift to explore the interplay between image, surface and viewer. Patches of intense saturated color are juxtaposed with deep earth tones to create an unexpected result. Color seems to jump off the canvas or panel in some areas while the viewer is drawn into deep dark spaces elsewhere – a hint of the underlying malaise and devastation of the known earth lying directly underneath the observed surface. The use of metallics suggest toxic chemicals that share space with the beauty of an imagined, bucolic wilderness. However, these paintings convey only the beginning of that process – in Ms. Levin’s work, the beauty of nature still reigns.

Marilyn Levin has exhibited extensively in the United states, and has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts grant, and three National Endowment for the Arts grants. This is Ms. Levin’s fifth exhibition with Toomey Tourell Fine Art.