I get the sense that Epstein’s vistas are composites of the Delaware Valley landscape, given the poses of the nudes appropriated from Renoir (see top image), the old-fashioned sailing ship behind the hamburger joint (image left), and the miles of what look like slag heaps.
But the paintings have the charm of a slice of modern life with young people chatting on a deck in a vast, mountainous landscape–very romantic until you note the towering oil tanks rising to the clouds atop the mountains like giant space ships grown to a size beyond all rational proportion.
I especially liked the drawings with the high contrast and the more improbable, shocking second colors–green, purple. They seemed like a new wrinkle on an old genre.
Epstein directs the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence program, located in West Philadelphia, which grants free studio space to neighborhood artists on a six-month rotating basis. A few doors away from aSFe, Sande Webster Gallery has gone all out with mad plantings in the gallery itself for the show ” The Garden is Art, Art of the Garden” (right, one of the indoor islands of live flowers and greenery, with David Wander’s oil “Cherry White” in the background and to the right of the plantings, Andrew Turner’s acrylic “Three Vases” above and James Atkins’ oil “Warm Flowers” below.
Shop local, shop artists this holiday season, a short list
Memento Mori, A trip through skulls, Sotheby’s, shot glasses and soap
The quintessence of collaboration – Damon Kowarsky and Atif Khan in Hybrid at Twelve Gates Arts