Grey Days
Atmospheric effects from overcast days and the possibilities of a neutral palette enrich these paintings and photographs.
Low-lying fog creeps over wetlands in Marilee Krause's Salt Marsh (Red). The piece shifts between hard-edged strokes defining the distant hills to pastel foreground rendering of fog-softened marsh plants.
In Marcia Burtt's Back Bay, mist hangs over an inlet, washing in layers over the distant bluffs and creeping into the foreground. This simple effect evokes the chill of the marine layer on a spring morning.
The low resolution of the webcam in Bill Dewey's Del Mar 7601 enhances the gauze of mist along Del Mar beach. A single figure is subsumed in the surf, expanding pictorial aloneness into emotional solitude.
Bill Dewey, Del Mar 7601, photograph, 6.5×10 in.
A socked-in Cambria coast offers an opportunity to amplify color in Patricia Doyle's Cambria. Grey sky, grey mountains, and a grey ocean clasp the rocky shore and bluff, brightening that swath of oranges and greens.
In Groundwork, Doyle invites the viewer to pause above sodden patchwork fields. Swift strokes, greens paled by moisture, and a glimpse of dark clouds convey the effects of a passing rainstorm.
Ian Roberts’s Estuary uses the light of an overcast day to emphasize details of trees and shrubs on the shore of Tomales Bay. His centered composition fills the canvas edge to edge and urges the viewer to survey it, left to right and back again.
Grey skies hush ocean blues and greens in Marcia Burtt's Overcast and Quiet Water. The rocks' clear, still reflections along the craggy shore lead you into this peaceful moment on the Central Coast.
Randall David Tipton discovers a psychedelic haze in his painting Low Clouds over Yellowstone. Accentuated by Tipton's adventurous palette, the dull overhanging clouds press down on the scene and intensify the hydro-thermally produced spectrum that has evolved over eons.
A uniform grey sky flattens fields and foothills in Marilyn Turtz's Ranch in Fog. Turtz blurs the edges and removes details, conjuring the fog's scrim.
Robert Abbott's loose strokes bring an immediacy to his painting Cachuma Study. The matte paint surface echos the low-contrast light and underscores his materials and plein-air process.
With monochrome, Susan Petty and Marilee Krause use neutral tones to focus on abstraction and minimalism.
Susan Petty's finely cross-hatched lines flatten a tree trunk into shades of grey in Explorations VII. By extracting the tree from its surroundings, Petty's biomorphic shapes become a topographic map of a newly discovered world.
Marilee Krause alludes to leaves, a tree, a hill, and a horizon line with a few washes and an arc of ink in Inklings 9. Grey creates a backdrop to focus on each element, a surface for reflecting on the rendering of our natural world.
—Cynthia Stahl
More grey inspired art
