By: Cynthia Underwood
Santa Monica, CA (The Hollywood Times) 12/14/19 – Saturday Dec. 14th Bergamot Station held its popular Winter Open House. All of the galleries were open with an exciting array of art. There was also live music and to round out the event, food trucks were plentiful.
This years’ display of art included the expected paintings of beautiful flowers, mind-boggling abstracts and figurative work. What caught my eye, though, was the number of cats in the artworks. Artists used cats in their art not just as a decorative feature but as the main subject. For example, in her tapestries artist Kayla Mattes at Richard Heller Gallery speaks of the destruction of the planet by us humans using cats as the subjects affected by the destruction. This is both a witty and a horrifying show of a very real catastrophe that global warming is creating. Of note, her show is entitled “Cat-astrophe”, which very, very funny.
Linda Smith at bG Gallery was also a big hit with her ceramic cats that rank high in design and appearance.
Also at bG Gallery was Ryan Schude’s stunning and interesting photo, “Inverness” which features a group of photographer friends running towards Schude through a cypress tree tunnel in Inverness, California.
While in William Turner Gallery, my insightful Australian friend Jane Hilton mentioned that Nick Hunt’s piece shown below is “very American” due to the red, white and blue and also, and most terribly, it is American because of the bullet holes. The artist was not seeking this reaction. The beauty of art is that we each read something different in it. Jane came with her Australian background viewing this piece and saw something so blatantly obvious that most Americans are probably not ingesting due to our extreme gun violence over-exposure. Bravo Jane.
Also on view at William Turner Gallery was the multi-layered Pop art piece, 7-Up by Greg Miller.
Bergamot Station is located at 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA, 90404.
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Cynthia Underwood is painting in her studio with her big orange cat Stewie right this very minute. In addition to painting, she has also worked on over 7,000 Design Patents in her career as a Design Patent Examiner with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Instagram: @cynthia_watercolor
