'Flock of Genius – 2' at Keyes Art in Sag Harbor

Keyes Art in Sag Harbor opens “Flock of Genius – 2,” a new show featuring the work of Michael Butler, Helen Frankenthaler, Fay Lansner, Joan Mitchell and Lucy Villeneuve, with a reception on Saturday, July 13, from 6 to 8 p.m. The show will remain on view through August 18.

Sag Harbor artist, historian and documentarian Michael Butler defines his style as narrative folk art or “intuitive” and his preferred medium is acrylic on canvas although at times he incorporates other media. Works of wonder and imagination in the mode of the great Henri Rousseau, Butler’s work is exacting, captivating, and often historically inspired.

Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the 20th century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work the impact of which on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.

Fay Lansner (1921-2010) was a leading second generation abstract expressionist artist. She was a devoted admirer of abstraction and its tenets as laid down by Hans Hoffman. She knew early on that she wanted to concentrate on the figure.

Lansner set out to develop the language of the body as she could interpret it in 20th century terms. Lansner stated in a 1976 interview, “ I draw from the model [the figure], and also I don’t draw from the model. I draw from my imagination, from my feeling, from my idea, from sensation, and from the object. Nature. It’s very important to have some sort of model, a reference one can spring to and from.”

In 1971, Lansner co-founded Women in the Arts, an organization seeking to change both public and institutional attitudes toward women artists.

Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) was an abstract artist whose prolific career spanned more than four decades. She worked in a variety of mediums — including oil on canvas, pastel on paper, and lithographic printing — and is widely recognized as one of the most significant artists of the post-war era.

Over her long and prolific career, the defining elements of Mitchell’s world — water, trees, dogs, poetry, music — created images and memories from which she worked. She once said, “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me — and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.”

She observed her landscape intensely, and her acute visual observations of form, space, and color in life were part of the visual memories she drew upon while painting.

Lucy Villeneuve resides and works in Springs in East Hampton and New York City.

“I work with elements of Taoism and specifically the Wu Wei, the art of nondoing,” she said. “Each shape feels intentional yet just out of my grasp, a slippery in-betweenness, something short of being too far or not enough. In these works, I focused on unfolding my visual language, telling a story of communion. The white and ivory black hold space while soft pastels and neons dance along the walls of their maze. While seemingly similar in ethos, the physical act of painting these shapes is a practice in patience, in immersion, with each reflecting a different instinct of ‘play.’

The colors speak to each other, active yet docile. The lines hold each other, and they all remember to breathe.

Keyes Art is at 45 Main Street in Sag Harbor. For more information, visit juliekeyesart.com or call 631-808-3588.