Brattleboro-area artist Marilyn Allen will present an exhibit of recent paintings, “It's time...” at the Oxbow Gallery, 275 Pleasant St., in Northampton, Massachusetts. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Nov. 11, from 5 to 8 pm. The show, which will be on display in the back room gallery, runs through Nov. 27.
Allen, who is primarily self-taught, launched into painting when she moved to an old house in the deep woods of Vermont in the early 1990s, according to a news release. While the isolated surroundings were challenging, with uneven dirt roads and harsh weather, the difficulties were balanced by her discovery of unfamiliar beauty.
She began by painting abandoned cars, then decaying trees, collapsed barns, and sheep pastures overgrown with ancient apple trees, which she observed in the landscape around her. Soon, images of tree trunks and their limbs morphed into figures and skies that disappeared into fields of color and light. In her most recent work, planes of color come and go in an outward movement of form and line.
Allen said in the news release that painting for her is an attempt to capture a world that defies the presumption of time and continually moves, shifts, and changes to find new and unexpected shapes.