IMAGES OF THE SEA
Photography by Sandra Gottlieb

Wed. 10/19/2011 - Tues. 11/22/2011
Opening Reception/Video Discussion with Will Hinton
Wed. 10/19/2011 @ 7 pm

Sandra Gottlieb was born in Brooklyn, New York, and from an early age was devoted to the study of ballet, the visual arts, and acting. She performed professionally with a number of ballet and modern dance companies in NYC. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gottlieb's artistic impulse brought her to acting, and she appeared in Off-Broadway plays in New York, and on daytime television. In both dance and acting she recognized the importance of, "finding yourself, being in the moment, in touch with one's inner being." Gottlieb sees this quality of being present in her current photographic focus on nature.

Ms Gottlieb has spent much of her adult life looking out over the Atlantic Ocean from her home in Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York. By slightly underexposing her images, the artist creates luminous studies of the ever changing sea and sky. Her observations from the same vantage point offers the viewer a cold turbulent gray-green sea one morning and a sparkling turquoise-jewel fluttering surface the next afternoon. Thirty large format photographs from three series will be on display:

1) Seascapes is a minimal interpretation of sea and sky, explored through scale, color, and simplicity of image. The shoreline provides Ms. Gottlieb an inexhaustible supply of infinitely variable forms. The sea and clouds combine to create myriad abstract visual elements. Starting from what is complex, she is able to reach what is simple and timeless.

2) Winter softly shrouds the Rockaway Beach Shore. The sun makes one last attempt at warming the earth, before the swirling snow covers the surf with a thick blanket of dense, white fog.

3) Summer shares a keen interest in the changing light and shifting tides evoking the painterly, color field paintings of Mark Rothko.

"Her work reveals an impressive image of a moment in time when the natural world, inherently large, becomes nearly too expansive for words. She has set out to catch the view at its grandest, and make a remarkable art from her observations."

Jonathan Goodman
Art in America Critic

Visit the artist's website