© 2006  - 2008 Galleria Beretich

Paintings

 

Watercolor on paper

 

Prices on request

Abstract Simplicity:

 

At first glance, Shirley Pettibone's painting match the camera at it own game, faithfully depicting the appearance of detailed reality. A second look - or more sustained scrutiny - overturns this initial impression. Her masterfully crafted canvases and delicately rendered watercolors in this 20 year survey deliver pleasure beyond the scope of photographs.

 

Up close, they dissolve into pure abstractions. When you examine their surfaces as documents of their construction, nothing is visible except an infinite area of seemingly random markings and irregular configurations based on purely formal arrangements of shape, color, line and edge.

 

From further away, however, Pettibone's paintings congeal into beautiful images of surfaces of water. Their depths - both literally and figuratively - may be unseen but are no less present.

 

David Pagel

 

L.A. Times, November 1991