Art for art’s sake – The Martha’s Vineyard Times

Artist Nina Lisa Maria, Beautiful women who also goes by Nina Gordon, whose operate is the target of an show at the West Tisbury library this thirty day period, didn’t particularly pick out work for the display that she believed would sell. Rather, she gathered up paintings from her individual selection — function that was hanging in her house, and chosen ink drawings from her sketchbooks, making for a pretty eclectic show, and 1 that signifies do the job that people today may not necessarily affiliate with the artist.

“The purpose they’re on my partitions at household is that I enjoy summary art,” claims Nina, who formerly owned and operated the Cobalt Gallery in West Tisbury. “Most of them have some kind of abstract quality to them, even though I commonly paint and draw representationally.”

“These particular is effective are pricey to me,” provides the artist, who is perhaps best-recognized for her plein air paintings of beloved Vineyard scenes. “I’m enthusiastic to show some of my favorites. This is a more intimate present for me.”

A single of the most extraordinary of the paintings, “Where Stars Are Born,” has all the elements of a operate of abstraction — swirling hues contrasting with a sample of very small dots, Beautiful women whilst it’s fairly plainly a galactic scene. The artist’s “Beach Stones” triptych even further stylizes the subject by employing uncommon hues and dimensions and distorting the sand and waves, offering the illustrations or photos a recommendation of an anatomical topic. In the same way, a colorful diptych featuring milkweed pods is a remarkably stylized rendering of a subject matter from mother nature. Although the painting “Gay Head” is additional representational than some of the some others, Nina has heightened the colors and simplified the strains to create a very different viewpoint on the iconic Vineyard scene.

The artist really shows her ability as a draftsman in the collection of smaller drawings highlighted in the show. As with the paintings, Nina had no intention of ever showing the drawings publicly. For the most part they are the output from an initiative named the Inktober Obstacle that the artist participates in each calendar year. During the month of October, artists nationwide are inspired to create an ink drawing a day and write-up them on Instagram. Supplied her mastery of the medium and the intricacy of the drawings, it is difficult to believe that that several of these are drawings the artist done in a day, with no real agenda.

Many of the images replicate on Island daily life and the ocean. Most amazing are a collection of wave drawings, concentrating on the movement of an specific wave in sharp detail, down to personal drops of h2o from the wave’s spray. These drawings are both highly evocative and stylistically gorgeous — reminiscent of Japanese renderings of the exact same matter.

Nina utilizes a strategy identified as sumi-e, or Japanese ink portray. It is essentially a cross between portray and drawing, making use of a exclusive brush and an ink wash with the emphasis put on the magnificence of just about every specific stroke. Nina uses the standard method quite properly in functions variously that includes boats, beach front scenes, fish, and other marine lifestyle. She has even captured an infamous Island denizen in the variety of two drawings of skunks, a single with the tongue-in-cheek title “Vineyard Kitty.”

“The drawings that are hanging now I did not do to promote,” claims Nina. “They were lower out from my sketchbooks. I’ve carried out the Inktober Problem for a couple several years now, and posted the images on Instagram. Men and women would be fascinated in getting them, but I advised them that they weren’t for sale.

Final calendar year for the first time, I commenced slicing them out and framing them and offering them for sale. Abruptly I had a overall body of do the job, so I was content to have the possibility to clearly show them at the library.”

Supplied the relatively little proportions of the drawings, Nina extra the paintings to spherical out the show. She is very happy with the way that the clearly show was hung, interspersing the drawings and paintings skillfully.

“I never genuinely supposed to sell any of this perform,” suggests the artist (noting that a few of the paintings will keep on being in her private selection, even though most are for sale). “It’s not typically that you go to a single of these events where it’s genuinely art for art’s sake. I struggle a constant struggle among what I want to say or do with my function and what people today will like.”

By the way, Nina also will make and sells delicious Kombucha in a selection of intriguing flavors. She prepares and bottles the beverages at her house commercial kitchen area, and sells them at the Chilmark Flea Market place in the summertime, and at various retailers all around the Island year-spherical. Test out to read about the goods and obtain out wherever to obtain.