Drawing-Paintings: New Work

Night Garden

Toby Hill, Isabelle Maynard, Sally Smith, Leigh Barbier

This exhibition explores the interplay of drawing and painting with work by four diverse artists.

60SIX presents for the first time, work by Northern California artist Toby Hill. Hill’s paintings traverse the territory of a prominent use of paint as drawing.
Meandering, open, deliberate lines become the structure to the painting. Drawing was always important in his practice, studying originally at the school of Visual Arts, N.Y. under Sam Gross, a cartoonist for The New Yorker. Hill recently decided to dedicate most of his time to drawing and painting after years of making wine. Collaged cartoons and figurative abstraction comprised of decisive lines and washes reveal mechanisms of wine making, or other biospheres. These paintings use a limited palette and either arrive completely abstract or give a glimpse of obscure structures whether machine or human.

Isabelle Maynard’s paintings begin with a drawing done with her eyes closed, after which the artist works into the canvas with oil washes. The connection with her body and the canvas is poignant and masterful. Sally Smith continues her exploration of burning items relating to the subject of the piece in making handmade charcoal. The alchemy of this custom charcoal and its original form is at play in each piece, which often contains a minimal but rich textural grid. Leigh Barbier’s work is narrative and surreal, sometimes cartoon-like with stylized exaggerated figures influenced by Disney, Thomas Hart Benton and gothic medieval painting. Her new work uses the “garden” as a fertile visual metaphor in which to process grief and transformation.