The Visions Of Three Artists

Hartman On Hudson will present is inaugural show “Three Women: Three Visions,” featuring the work of Leslie Singer, Claudia Baez and Ellen Ball, artists who employ disparate media to create moody and dramatic works. The show opens with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 31, at Hartman On Hudson, 8 Moniebogue Lane, and runs through September 7

Leslie Singer is a Santa Fe-based painter whose new series, “Gotham Gals,” takes its cues from the audacious Art Deco era painter Tamara de Lempicka. Singer has long been attracted to the allure of fashion and its way of transforming a specific identity to a more obscure figure.

“People have always been the most interesting and challenging subjects for me,” Singer says. “That being so, my goal is to go beyond traditional portraiture to capture mood or evoke emotion, without necessarily defining it. I try to retain an element of mystery that draws the viewer into the piece and allows them to create their own narrative.”

“Gotham Gals” is also intended as a love letter to Manhattan, where Singer called home until recently.

“I painted these at the height of COVID when I was staying in Santa Fe,” she adds. “ I was missing New York and pining for the glamour, excitement and possibilities that drew me to the city decades ago.”

In 2017, Claudia Doring Baez was overcome with teenage memories of going with her family to their neighborhood arts cinema in Mexico City where she was raised. One film in particular eclipsed the others: French director Alain Renais’s 1961 enigmatic movie “Last Year at Marienbad,” a seminal work of the French New Wave. Using the film stills as inspiration, Baez’s oil, charcoal and oil stick paintings on canvas, invite viewers into her private bold and stylized vision of this influential film.

Ellen Ball’s large scale works on Belgian linen feature iconic forms distilled to their abstract minimal shapes, lines and contours, or photographic simplicity. By combining elaborate patterns, intriguing uses of metal leaf, cutting, collage and oil paints, she creates wholly original compositions and artworks. Working with found or appropriated imagery, Ball Photoshops, cuts, collages, layers, or draws on these creating new compositions, which are then transferred onto canvas. This process leaves behind black ink and reveals a natural degradation. Imperfections occur and new shapes and textures present themselves.

Her background as a graphic designer and illustrator for the beauty industry influences her work and is evident in her choices of imagery and application.

For more information about “Three Women: Three Visions,” visit HartmanOnHudson.com.