In her second exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery Beth Barry presents bright acrylic paintings that focus on light, color, and movement in the exhibition Playful Scapes. Barry’s work is strongly influenced by the Massachusetts coastline where she grew up and felt tremendous happiness and excitement by the ocean. Pleasure is a large part of her process and a critical part of the finished piece. Barry states, “My paintings are places of happiness”.

In the exhibition Playful Scapes Mel Smothers presents energetic, colorful abstracted landscapes with oil on canvas from his series “Mountain Lake”. This series references to the Hopi shaman Mountain Lake, who influenced psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung during their brief but profound encounter in New Mexico. Smothers’ paintings combine rich color, painterly brushstrokes, and combination of opaque and translucent layers to create a striking and dynamic surface. Smothers explains, “For me, painting is about the journey.

That needs to be said. Validation comes and goes. What remains is the visual road map created by the struggle of painting. The story of pushing paint around, and as the years go by, finding it is the reason to get up in the morning.”