Advance press for echoing, opening Nov. 4 at ArtPlay Studio and Gallery, describes participating painters Kim Beller and Elizabeth Porritt Carrington as “entangling their threads of connection” to mount the two-person show. Beller and Carrington both use dreamlike spiritual imagery; Beller’s figures have a folkloric quality, and her frequent use of an altar motif suggests her lifelong reverence for nature and nature’s cycles. In a story in last month’s Asheville Made, she noted that her acrylic works begin “with layers and layers of mantras” and other intentions, including “the wish that all beings be free from suffering.”
Carrington comes to Asheville from Ireland, and her intricate mixed-media works have an otherworldly glow, like fairytales lit on fire. She opines the “human-earth connection,” which she views as “the longing for and belonging to Earth … the loss and gain, love and grief, the calling to be home.”
The show will mostly comprise individual pieces, but Beller and Carrington will also co-create three works.
“It is a rare thing indeed to find another painter you could collaborate with on the same canvas,” Carrington notes to Asheville Made. “What unites Kim and me … is our understanding of nature as a participant in our creative work; we are not capturing something we see, more joining in and conversing with it.”
ArtPlay founder Kristen Edge describes the artists as possessing a “tender opening heart … [acknowledging] what it is to be alive in the natural world.”
Carrington in turn praises the venue: “ArtPlay is a huge part of our ecosystem, and has already, in this short year, created this community creative force.”
The November exhibit is scheduled to coincide with the gallery’s one-year anniversary.
ArtPlay, 372 Depot St. #44, River Arts District, Asheville. artplay-studio.com. Nov. 4-Dec. 18. Opening Reception: Friday, Nov. 4, 5:30-8pm.