By Natasha Anderson
Painter Gail Sauter has joined The Lucy Clark Gallery & Studio, in Brevard. Sauter’s newest series, exploring color and the joy of flowers, is on display now.
“During COVID, my usual subject matter of people going about their daily lives wasn’t available to me, so I started exploring interior scenes and that led me to flowers,” says Sauter. “I find it amazing that things so fragile and small can carry such weight and power.”
Celebration. Gail Sauter, artist
Sauter is interested in the moods the flowers elicit, rather than their specifics. She interprets these moods through color and paint handling, using tools of abstraction including brushwork, gesture, edges, shapes and texture. In this series, she works from memory, looking hard, studying her subject, thinking about it, then putting it away or moving it into another room, before beginning. She does not use sketches, thumbnails or drawings on the canvas. The work develops as a conversation, back and forth, with one stroke suggesting the next, and one color asking for another.
“It’s a back-and-forth thing, a dance,” says Sauter. “Sometimes I am the leader, but usually the painting itself suggests what to do next. It is essential to the painting’s freshness and aliveness that I follow its lead.”
Sauter is one of 12 artists whose work is available at The Lucy Clark Gallery & Studio. Mediums include clay, wood, metal, fiber, oils, acrylics, photography and mixed media.
“Gail fills a voice in the gallery which asks the viewer to rest awhile in the gentle and lyrical lines of her work,” says Clark. “Her paintings are at once soft and feminine with a flow of composition and color that truly draws the viewer through the entire piece.”
The Lucy Clark Gallery & Studio is located at 51 West Main Street in Brevard. To learn more, visit LucyClarkGallery.com or call 828.884.5151.
