(Images left to right:
Marion Peck, “Colette” (detail), 2010, oil and encaustic on panel, 16.5” x 16.5,” Cover of Marion Peck’s book “Animal Love Summer” & Brad Woodfin, “Ibis,” 2010, oil on panel, 20” x 16”)

Sloan Fine Art is pleased to present, in the front gallery, “What You Are, So Once Were We,” new paintings and sculpture by Marion Peck. With "What You Are Now, So Once Were We," Marion Peck takes inspiration from photographic portraiture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a Victorian sensibility, to challenge our contemporary relationship with death. As she explains, “Looking into the face of a stranger, someone who had a name, someone who lived a life and then died long ago, I am filled with a strange sensation. It is as though I am looking at a ghost. There is a connection between me, one of the living, and them, one of the dead.” By marrying this emotional, connective response with her exquisite technique and fastidious attention to detail, Marion Peck has created an exhibition that both honors the dead and engages the living. Two powerful, complex, larger scale works, the painting “Good Christian Children” and mixed media sculpture “Solve et Coagula,” are complimented by a multitude of smaller, hauntingly beautiful sepia-toned portraits while the entire gallery is staged with black velvet walls, a church altarpiece and fresh lilies. The overall effect is not sadness, but rather the feeling of being enveloped in an environment of quiet reverence and fond affection. The viewer is encouraged to slow down, take pause, and experience each individual, lovingly executed work while considering the artist's message that, "Remembering those who came before us is what makes us truly alive."

Marion Peck's first fine art monograph, "Animal Love Summer," is a 128-page, full-color survey, with works spanning 1993 to 2010, and essays by artist/educator Aaron Smith and Peck herself. Sloan Fine Art will host a signing with Marion Peck Saturday, December 18th from 3 to 5pm and books will be available throughout the run of her exhibition.

Marion Peck earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to study at two different MFA programs, Syracuse University in New York and Temple University in Rome. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide including Sloan Fine Art, Bellwether Gallery and DFN Gallery in New York, Roq la Rue, Davidson Galleries and the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, Galerie Magda Danyz in Paris, Galleria Giampiero Biasutti in Turin, The Laguna Art Museum and The Bristol Art Museum. Born in The Philippines while her family was on a trip around the world, Peck lived in Rome and Seattle before settling in Eagle Rock, California. This is Marion Peck’s second solo exhibition at Sloan Fine Art.

Sloan Fine Art is also pleased to present, in the project room, “The Strangers” by Brad Woodfin.The magnificently rendered wildlife creatures in Brad Woodfin’s paintings delicately emerge from a deep black background. Barely breaking the glossy surface shadow, they exist in a no man’s land between darkness and light, mystery and revelation, power and vulnerability. These majestic creatures are familiar to us through nature shows and childhood education. Yet they are strangers, forever unknown. Each lone figure represents the little ease of those among us who are strangers, with moods inspired by the wearing of masks, Noh theatre and Fever Ray, as well as by the animals themselves.

Brad Woodfin was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1970. He headed west in 1991 and eventually studied printmaking and painting at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. While he has previously exhibited in Vancouver and New York, “The Strangers” is Woodfin’s first solo show in the U.S. Brad Woodfin lives and works in Montréal, Canada.

Sloan Fine Art is located at 128 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. Business hours are Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 6, and by appointment. The gallery is CLOSED December 20, 2010 through January 4, 2011 for the holidays.

SLOAN FINE ART
128 Rivington Street
(corner of Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002
212.477.1140
sloanfineart.com