Chiaroscuro: Exhibition at the Upstream Gallery

Eleanor Goldstein and Rachel Whitlow are friends, colleagues and admirers of each other's work. In Chiaroscuro, they explore the range of light to dark, each in her own inimitable style but from a common perspective.  The two artists share both galleries in a curated conversation with each other.  

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Winter 

© Rachel Weatherford Whitlow—Moon Rising on the Brandywine, Kennett Square PA 2017

Chiaroscuro in painting defines objects solely by degrees of contrast between an object and its ground, without a contouring line. It employs slow gradations of value from light to dark that create volume by modeling form. We also refer to Chiaroscuro as the interplay of light and shadow on landscape that emphasizes form in a particularly dramatic way. As light changes, landscapes seem to appear, disappear and evaporate in a matter of minutes, creating a completely different visual and emotive perspective of the same places over time.

Winter

© Rachel Weatherford Whitlow—Sunset on the Brandywine River, Kennett SQ. PA 2017

"It is the constantly changing nature of light, weather and landscape that inspires and drives me to return to the same subjects repeatedly." —Rachel Whitlow

SUMMER

© Rachel Weatherford Whitlow—Summer Reflections on the Brandywine, Kennett SQ. PA

Upstream Gallery Exhibitions: Two Perspectives: Photographer & Painter Share a History

A certain view of the world can run in families. This is especially true of this month's two solo shows. In April 2012 Upstream presented solo shows by painter Mary Rankin and her daughter, the photographer Jo Zalon Meer. This May, Upstream is excited to offer another two generational set of shows: Meer and her daughter, Rachel Whitlow, a third generation Upstream painter. For both artists, these shows represent an informal homage to Mary Rankin and her husband, painter Al Zalon, both graduates of Cooper Union School of Art 1948.

In Makom: Place Itself, Meer continues her exploration of the spiritual import of the world around us. For over ten years, she has been working in the wooded coastal areas of Down East Maine. More recently, she has begun photographing the lower Hudson Highlands. Of this work, she says: " Much of my work is informed by a sense of the fragility of our lives and the people in it. This extends to the world around us, and in particular, the landscapes I work in most of the time".

With Fleeting Light, Whitlow continues to explore the boundaries between figurative and abstract language. Despite her careful geographic identifications, her work does not reference a specific place as much as it transforms that place into a distilled experience derived from imagination, emotion and memory. Whitlow has always been drawn to the work of the Luminist painters, many of whom also worked in the Hudson River Valley and Maine. She learned to draw from her grandparents, and like them also graduated from Cooper Union.