BIG ART

Davis and Cline Gallery 552, 552 A Street Suite 1, Ashland, OR 97520

Dates: March 1 to 30, 2002

Opening reception: Friday March 1, 2002 from 5 to 8 pm

The Davis and Cline Gallery 552 will present only three paintings in its show entitled BIG ART. The three paintings, each by a different artist, clearly demonstrate that in some cases size counts.

"Standing in front of a very large painting seems to create feelings independent of the image itself." says John Davis, owner of the Davis and Cline Gallery. "That's why we are presenting the work of three different artists with three different painting styles and three different subjects."

Local artist Janice Gabriel will be showing her new work "Roots" a massive oil painting four feet high by twelve feet long. This realistic painting of a tree trunk and its roots, is a tightly detailed study of texture, rhythm, and structure, and is clearly a metaphor for life in the 21st century. She has been working on the piece for over a year. Gabriel attended UCLA and UC Santa Barbara where she received her BA in Fine Art in 1970. She received her MS in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Fine Arts, Boston in 1973 and her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1976. She has exhibited nationally and continues to teach art as she has since 1972.

Dan Mish moved to the Rogue Valley two years ago from Los Angeles where he was born in 1951. In 1973 he received his BA in Graphic Arts from California State University, Los Angeles and has been an exhibiting artist in Los Angeles since then. The painting he will exhibit "I saw flowers in the dream" is a mixed media on canvas piece six feet high by eight feet long. This realist based expressionist artwork is rich in layered subtlety.

The third artist, Sam Gimbel was raised as a bi-coastal child between Los Angeles and New York City. Now living in Ashland, Gimbel studied at the Otis Parsons School of Design, Los Angeles & Paris under Emerson Wolfer and Lita Albacurque. He paints in the "Action School" style of abstract expressionism, where color, feeling, mood and line form the basis of the compositions. The non-objective nature of non-representational (abstract) paintings, accentuate the drama of large paintings best. The fact that there is no identifiable point of reference in one of Gimbel's paintings allows the unique effect of size to stand out.