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Currently showing at Linda Matney Gallery is an exhibit by Art & Margo Rosenbaum.
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Currently showing at Linda Matney Gallery is an exhibit by Miles Cleveland Goodwin.
The Linda Matney Gallery has always been about more than art, and that’s due to its owner and curator, John Lee Matney. Matney and his family established the gallery in 2010 in honor of Matney’s mother, a great supporter of the arts, who passed away in 2001. “During the pandemic, it’s been more difficult, but we want to create a laboratory for experimentation and research for our artists where collaboration lets their work continually evolve,” Matney said.
Matney knows firsthand how important collaboration and community is for artistic growth. Although he grew up in Newport News, Matney spent years as a photographer in the Athens, Georgia, art scene. While there he learned much from such luminaries as Art and Margo Rosenbaum, Jeremy Ayers and Paul Thomas.
This personal history with the Rosenbaums gives Matney a special insight into the “Art and Margo Rosenbaum” exhibit, running from January 22 to March 31, 2021 at the Linda Matney Gallery.
Art Rosenbaum’s paintings and drawings are influenced by the many characters he finds around him. “He finds people such as obscure blues singers and bluegrass musicians in surrounding rural counties or an outsider artist who lives 55 miles from nowhere,” Matney said.
Margo Rosenbaum’s section will be no less fascinating. It will include her paintings, and photographs of notables like Willem de Kooning and James Baldwin.
It’s important to Matney to promote the wellspring of local talent in the area and not just bring in artists from out of town. “We have reached out to local colleges such as Christopher Newport and William & Mary and brought their work in dialogue with artists from Athens,” Matney said.
The welcoming laboratory Matney has created has not gone unnoticed in the art world. Well-known artists now approach the Linda Matney Gallery. The show currently running at the gallery, “From the Spirit: Miles Cleveland Goodwin,” which runs through January 5, 2021, is one example.
“Miles is concerned with the mysteries of the South and the people and places he encounters in his daily life around Blue Ridge, Georgia, his native Mississippi, and elsewhere,” Matney said. “He told me he knows there is something out there and it is hard to define, so he tries to paint that.”
Despite the different backgrounds and styles of the artists who come to the Linda Matney Gallery, they have two things in common: a drive to experiment and a willingness to grow.
Elara Strand is a Williamsburg area writer who loves art, jazz and dancing any chance she gets.
757-675-6627 · lindamatneygallery.com
