Marsha Solomon Recent Abstractions - LIMarts

Long Island Museum Honors Marsha Solomon as Artist of the Month

By Mary Gregory

The Long Island Museum in Stony Brook NY has named Marsha Solomon as Artist of the Month for April 2017, featuring her paintings in a mini-solo exhibition.  It's part of the Smithsonian-affiliated museum's LIMArts program instituted in 2014 by the then new executive director, Neil Watson, as a way for the museum to build ties with working artists on Long Island and to allow them to build bridges with the community.    

Solomon's nine paintings in the exhibition come from her recent series "From Rhythm to Form" and "Of Pure and Endless Light."  In them, she has taken classic Abstract Expressionist forms and made them her own.  Solomon's mixed media abstractions are filled with bright color, boundless enthusiasm, poetry, and joy.

Having found inspiration in the work of early painters, Solomon joins that inspiration with her own vision and aesthetic.  She states, "Every artist finds her unique voice, but echoes of others enrich our songs.  As an Abstract Expressionist painter, I’ve been inspired by my “elder sisters” in art, such as Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner – also Long Island artists – who have been stepping stones towards my own artistic vision."  Solomon's work may be rooted in art history, but blossoms under her brush into a rare and lovely creations thanks to her unique spirit joined with her impressive mastery of technique.

The bright, sunny tones, ebullient lines and smooth transitions of density and tonality appear to have just been breathed onto the canvasses, but the truth is that they are the product of years of hard work.  Solomon admits that she sometimes lets the paint "have its way" but more often she directs it to her will.  The results are balanced, harmonious works whose forms and colors sing.  The poetic nature of Solomon's work is clear in works like "Star Formations," "Song of the Sun," "Narcissus," and "Calyx and Pink" that recall forms of nature without trying to recreate or picture them.  Rather, the spirit and imagination of the viewer is engaged, and often one finds echoes of Solomon's work long after stepping away from the canvas.  This is her intent.  Solomon states, "Art makes the ordinary special and enables one to see beauty in the world in all its manifestations."

The artist is also a widely published poet, and one of her poems, "The Blue of The Sky Never Ceases" is included alongside her paintings.  It gives further insight into the spirit of this artist whose words echo the serenity, affirmation, wonder and love that seem to pour from the artist's soul and seep into the very fibers of her paintings.