“Velocity Games” Brings Motion And Color To Sag Harbor

A new exhibit inspired by the motions within the natural world and the human body is coming to Sara Nightingale Gallery in Sag Harbor this Memorial Day weekend. Velocity Games: New Work by Margaret Garrett and Steven Kinder opens on Saturday, May 26 with a reception that will take place from 6 to 8 p.m.

Steven Kinder’s SN 1001-18.

“Both (artists) have been working in series that are related to motion, so when I was thinking of a name for the show, Velocity Games came to mind,” owner and director Sara Nightingale said. “In normal English, the word ‘velocity’ comes from the Latin word for ‘swift,’ so it is thought of as being quick motion. However, in science, velocity can be slow as well. It’s a vector, which means it has both magnitude and direction, unlike speed, which has only magnitude.”

“The ‘games’ part,” Nightingale continued, “comes from the fact that the works will be in dialogue with one another. I want to see how the various paintings play off one another when they are hung in the gallery.”

A Shelter Island native, Garrett is an artist and dancer who joined the Pennsylvania Ballet at the tender age of sixteen and later danced with the Cleveland Ballet as a soloist. Finding a spiritual representation to dance in the movement and rhythm of line and color in her early dance training, she began abstract paintings in her early twenties. “When I begin working on a new piece, I see the paper or canvas as an empty stage…” Garrett explained.

Tuning Fields, one of the artist’s ongoing series, is line-driven and encompasses color-layering – while Choros focuses on shapes and choreography. A video piece will be included in this most recent exhibit.

Kinder has been creating art in the form of drawings, paintings and large scale installations in his Brooklyn and Water Mill studios for over four decades. He is largely inspired by movement, energy and natural forces and has diverse interests in various forms of dynamic tension found in nature like tidal bores, surges, and whirlpools. More recently, Kinder further examines the tension and balance between the intuitive, gestural mark and the intellectual organization of form.

In his standard format, the nine inch square drawings have now become templates for his larger paintings. In these templates, Kinder explores how form and color can come together and break apart while maintaining compositional integrity inside a small space. When Kinder translates the small drawings onto larger canvases, there is a palpable and necessary shift of pressure, color intensity and rhythm.

Kinder wants his work to “call out in some way.” He is inspired by the eternal color of Rothko, the angst embedded in the figures of Bacon, and geometric abstractions.

“This exhibition marks the first time I will be showing artists in depth since moving to my Sag Harbor space. It’s a two person exhibition, so there will be a lot of variety (depth) from each artist,” Nightingale added. “There will be a lot of color in this show and some large scale paintings.”

Velocity Games will run through Tuesday, June 26.

Sara Nightingale Gallery is located at 26 Main Street in Sag Harbor. For more information call 631-793-2256 or visit www.saranightingale.com.