'Spring Quintet': A Layered Show About Nature

It is always important to incorporate the familiar into any piece of artwork, Margery Gosnell-Qua tells her art students at the Suffolk County Community College campus in Riverhead.

She encourages them to use their memories and their senses, she explained during a telephone interview last week, which can be as simple as taking a look at the world around them.

That’s exactly what Southampton Cultural Center curator Arlene Bujese asked from the artists she selected for the upcoming show “Spring Quintet.” The upbeat, lyrical, nature-centric exhibit is opening on Thursday, March 29, and features Remsenburg-based Ms. Gosnell-Qua, along with painters Jane Johnson, who lives in Sag Harbor; Deborah Black and Pamela Collins Focarino, both of whom live in East Hampton; and sculptor Ronnie Chalif, who lives in Manhattan.

But there is a twist to the exhibit as well.

“I like strong artists and ones who stretch the meaning of the theme,” Ms. Bujese said during a telephone interview last week. “I’ve never called a show a ‘landscape show’ in my entire career because it evokes what we look out of the window and see. I want them to stretch that. I picked artists who really take it as an inspiration rather than reporting it back. They transposed nature in a way that makes it more exciting.”

Ms. Johnson sees landscapes simply as colors and shapes, she explained during a telephone interview last week. The abstract work she plans on exhibiting at the Cultural Center is derived from East End scenery, she said. At the same time, it is devoid of any recognizable local spots.

“I just like to get my hands on something and work with color. It’s all about color,” she said. “One of my first memories of painting was an old wooden canoe with my grandfather in Vermont. In some ways, that made me really love to paint, even though it was not creative painting. It was wonderful.”

Before moving from Washington, D.C., to Sag Harbor in 1996, the artist primarily painted Italian landscapes, rich with oranges and greens, she said. Now, the colors are softer, full of blues and cooler greens, and the compositions have a “flatter feel,” she said. This is her first time showing at the Cultural Center.

Ms. Johnson’s style isn’t one seen in any of the other exhibiting artists, which is key, Ms. Bujese said, as she explained the makeup of the pieces in “Spring Quintets.” Ms. Gosnell-Qua is known for her lush, abstracted clouds and use of reflection. Ms. Black, who is the most abstract-expressionist of the group, uses drawing very prominently in her painting. Ms. Focarino focuses on the relationship between sea and sky. And Ms. Chalif’s sculpture is based on mountains.

“They’re complementary, but each really stands out on their own so that you don’t see a whole room full of horizons and have to figure out which artist did them,” Ms. Bujese said. “We don’t want any ho-hum.”

Returning artist Ms. Gosnell-Qua is sure to deliver, Ms. Bujese said.

For this exhibit, the artist will be showing her largest work yet—a 54-inch-wide-by-60-inch-high oil on canvas of Cupsogue Beach in East Moriches. The painting is called “Sojourn” and is the central piece in a series she has been working on for 10 years, she said.

Ms. Gosnell-Qua’s artistic process begins with small watercolors, she said, adding that she plans to show a selection she made while looking at Tiana Bay in Hampton Bays this past summer. Some will die at phase one, some will progress to phase two—oil on paper, which she will also display at the upcoming exhibit, she said.

“Then they have to sit and I have to respond to them,” she said of what happens with the small watercolors once she has painted them. “That can take quite a while and then, eventually, I fall in love with one of them. It gives you the energy to bring it to a large canvas. It comes back to you, like the way that song goes, ‘The heart brings you back,’” she sang. “There’s a little Blues Traveler in there.”

There is a reason the Cupsogue Beach series has kept the artist busy for a decade, she said. It’s simply what she knows. A lifelong Hamptons vacationer, the East End has awed the artist since she was a young girl.

“I remember going to Westhampton art shows when I was a kid—my parents would bring me here—and I would look around and say, ‘I’m going to do this,’” she recalled. “I’ve always been inspired by seeing what other people do.”

And she’ll get that chance once her work hangs with more than 40 other pieces at the Cultural Center, she pointed out, while offering an inside look at what she does best.

“This is a chance to see my stages in the process,” the painter said. “To me, that’s exciting and informative. I wind up talking to my students about process and tapping into a creative source. My teacher always used to say to me, ‘Work small instead of staying home and trying to make masterpieces.’ Small works are important. It’s vital. It’s vital to see the show!”

She laughed, and concluded, “Well, maybe for my students.”

“Spring Quintet,” an exhibition focusing on the representation of nature through the perspectives of five regional artists, will open on Thursday, March 29, at noon at the Southampton Cultural Center. A reception will be held on Saturday, March 31, from 5 to 7 p.m. For more information, visit southamptonculturalcenter.org.