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Eric Dever’s work is black and white and red all over. He began using the limited color palette 10 years ago this month as a way to create subjective designs that echo hues from the environment. Before summer ends, people can experience his work at exhibits in New York City and the Hamptons. I caught up with Dever at his studio in Water Mill to find out more about his upcoming projects, what inspires his creativity and the meaning behind his abstractions.

Christine Berry and Martha Campbell launched their gallery to bring attention to the works of a selection of postwar and contemporary artists and revealing how these artists have advanced ideas and lessons in powerful and new directions. Berry Campbell provided five paintings by Jill Nathanson for MOCA Jacksonville's Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction. Berry traveled to Jacksonville to see the exhibition, and we asked her a few questions.

Mike Solomon creates beautiful, color saturated paintings that have a built-in grid reminiscent of early Larry Poons geometric accents, which contain an elegant veil of dreamlike mist. Solomon is a tastemaker if there ever was one, and coupled with his unusual acquaintances, including his experiences as a studio assistant to John Chamberlain, James Brooks and Charlotte Park, and collectors like Edward Albee, Beth DeWoody, Dan Flavin and Richard Meier, among others, this kind of professional support and relationships are simply golden, and it shows.

It was New Year’s Day of 1946 when Annie Solomon and her husband Syd, who had finished his service as a camoufleur — a specialist in the design and implementation of camouflage — in the war, arrived in Sarasota, where they intended to start their new life together. They’d met five years earlier, just after Pearl Harbor, at a distant cousin’s wedding when Annie, a graduate of Ohio State, was 21.

A fair number of people by this time must know that I greatly admire the mostly-mixed- media abstract paintings of Stanley Boxer.  Since I started posting at this website, I’ve discussed his work four times, most recently and at greatest length when he showed at Spanierman Modern in 2012. Before then – around 2009, I believe – I dealt at even greater length in reviewing his retrospective that premiered in Richmond, Virginia and went on to tour in New England and Florida.

I am happy to report that his recent show at Berry Campbell (closed May 21) carried on his unique gifts with many more pleasures. 

Painter Stanley Boxer used the term “manufacture” to describe his process. His late-period paintings currently on view at Berry Campbell Gallery demonstrate this notion of assemblage remarkably well. His abstractions integrate raw materials into a polished whole, all the while retaining evidence of painting as pure, manual labor.

Boxer’s body of work gives renewed meaning to what used to be called “all-over painting.” Employing multiple brushwork techniques within any single painting, Boxer crams his surfaces with impastos, drips, dabs, washes, and three dimensional objects, foregrounding both the serene and frictional properties of painting. Embedded materials such as sawdust, stones, glitter, twine, and netting produce mysterious depths within the thick, textured, melted and bleeding color.

Those familiar with the Sarasota visual arts scene will immediately know the name of painter Syd Solomon, whose large-scale, colorful abstract works have drawn attention and collectors for decades. But they may not fully realize how Solomon’s work was influenced by his days as an aerial camoufluer in World War II. An exhibition opening April 29 at the Museum of Art in DeLand, Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed: Camouflage & Lettering in the Artist’s Work, aims to change that.

A Traveling Museum Exhibition of 36 paintings and works on paper with a hardcover catalog with essays by Michael Auping – Chief Curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, George Bolge- Director, Museum of Art in Deland, FL and the eminent Art Historian, Dr. Gail Levin. 

Taking place in the fall of even-numbered years, the CMCA Biennial is an open, statewide juried exhibition featuring work in all mediums produced by the selected artists in the past two years. A snapshot of Maine’s vibrant contemporary art scene, the CMCA Biennial dates back to 1978 and is the longest-running juried competition in the state. Jurors for 2016 are Christine Berry, director of Berry Campbell Gallery, New York City, and John Yau, noted writer, poet, and art critic for Hyperallergic. This show is sponsored by Allen Insurance and Financial and CHUBB.

Starting on June 12, “Women of Abstract Expressionism” will spotlight virtual unknowns like Judith Godwin and Perle Fine, alongside the handful who broke through, including Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Ms. Chanzit’s research convinced the museum to acquire seven canvases in the show.