Be There Now with Gloria Asselta-Sullivan's Paintings

The paintings of Gloria Asselta-Sullivan, currently on view at Zume’s on Main Street are soothing and warm, comforting and meditative. In depicting different aspects of the New England landscape, they draw the eye in with an invitation to come and sit in the space they detail.

The beautiful centerpiece of the show, Main Street, New England, is poised as a type of guardian.  To its right are paintings of Charlestown, and to its left paintings of Marshfield and Cape Cod.

Old School, Marshfield features three small buildings. The deep dark sky overhead does not seem to cast a shadow over them. The house in the middle, white with a small red chimney has tiny windows lined up alongside the front door, like a row of buttons on a dress shirt.

In her artist's statement Sullivan writes, "My approach to painting is uncomplicated. I base my subjects on what are visually challenging to me." From the look of these paintings, Sullivan is visually challenged by movement in nature, such as the play of beads of sunlight against a row of houses -- see Confetti of Sunshine-- or leaves in gentle free fall from a tree, such as in Baldwin Street. There is a feeling, while looking at these paintings, that something is really happening now. You are in this place.

It could be that the mark of really good art is that it makes you forget you’re looking at art. The great joke of Rene Magritte’s drawing of a pipe with the quote "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," (This is not a pipe) maybe is stood on its head by work like Gloria Asselta-Sullivan’s. Rather than saying these are not the marshlands of Marshfield, or leaves falling from a tree in autumn, the feeling is, "oh, yes they are."

Asselta-Sullivan’s show continues at Zume’s. The artist can be reached by e-mail at gloriacs@verizon.net.