D I L L O N G A L L E R Y
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Michael Sherman “Aerial – Scapes on Canvas”
May 1 – June 29, 2008

“Aerial – Scapes on Canvas,” a new body of work from emerging Brooklyn–based painter, Michael Sherman, depicts the American landscape from a bird’s eye view.  Graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with extensive training in Italy, and a recent recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, Sherman comes to Dillon after having ten national and international solo shows.  This is his debut New York City one-man exhibit.

The spaces depicted in the paintings are fictional environments constructed from aerial photographs, sketches and remembered landscapes. Sherman’s distanced, and slightly tilted, vantage points capture the schematic, overall outlines of dense rural and urban landscapes. His subjects seem typical; cities, roads, and nature, and when viewed from the ground are part of our everyday routine and often seem disconnected.  Sherman pulls the viewer back and highlights and intensifies the interlacing relationships between these subjects, which merge in the greater aerial view. 

In ‘Aerial Scape 22 (grided city)’ Sherman depicts a city from 350 feet above. The streets are parallel to the picture plane top and bottom but the city is slightly tilted to create perspective.  The buildings are rendered with outlines and scumbling over a warm under-painting of purples and light oranges.  The viewer is not in a tall building or looking through the window of a plane, but suspended somewhere in between. 

Buildings and cities are not Sherman’s only subject matter.  In ‘Aerial Scape 26 (1/2 New York ½Ohio) urban and rural environments are seamlessly combined while split down the middle of this square-ish piece.  The composition is strong and well balanced, anchored by two rivers.  One river is coming from the lower left and quickly falling off the bottom of the picture plane while the other recedes quickly into the distance leading the viewer directly into the urban mess of delicately rendered gray and purple streets.

The works are optimistic; the surfaces rich with texture, painterly brushwork and atmosphere.  Sherman escapes emotional exaggeration and creates a quiet and unsentimental pictorial environment.

Michael Sherman 614-352-8785 http://www.michaelshermanpainting.com

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