The beauty of land, sea and sky spied on Long Island and Maine are the muses for a solo exhibition featuring landscapes by Don Resnick (1928-2008) at the Hofstra University Museum. "Don Resnick: Essence of Place" opens on May 13, 2014 and has an Artist Reception on Thursday, May 15, at 4 p.m. at the Emily Lowe Gallery. The show continues through Aug. 15, 2014
“Don Resnick’s art has the ability to transform the canvas into new realms of quiet tranquility that abound with a wonder at the delicacy of the natural world, or to synthesize experiential strands, based upon his memories of place, into canvases bursting forth with infinite majesty," stated Beth E. Levinthal, Executive Director of the Hofstra University Museum in an exhibition release. "We are pleased to feature these magnificent works that engage and inspire us all.”
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“Marshes” by Don Resnick, 1983. Oil on linen, 40 x 50 inches. Hofstra University Museum Collections, Gift of David Resnick and Iwonka Piotrowska, HU2009.9.
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"Essence of Place" includes oil paintings, watercolors and works on paper that were inspired by the vistas of Long Island and those surrounding the Resnick family enclave in Maine, according to the museum.
Resnick was a student of Oskar Kokoschka, Raphael Soyer, Seymour Lipton and Julian Levi. He studied art at Hobart College in Geneva, New York; The School for Social Research in New York City; and the Internationale Akademie fur Bildende Kunst in Salzburg, Austria. Resnick lived and worked in Rockville Centre in Nassau County on Long Island, NY.
His work continues to be exhibited by Odon Wagner Gallery of Toronto. Resnick's art is held by private and public collections including Portland Museum of Art, Maine, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine, the Nassau County Museum of Art (Roslyn, NY) and the Heckscher Art Museum (Huntington, NY).
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“Harbor Island I” by Don Resnick, 1974. Oil on canvas, 40 x 39 ½ inches. Hofstra University Museum Collections, Gift of David Resnick and Iwonka Piotrowska, HU2013.20.
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"Resnick is one of a handful of significant painters who continue to devote their talents to portraying the American landscape," wrote Paul Duval in "Don Resnick: Toward the Light" and excerpted on the Odon Wagner Gallery's website.
"Inevitably, his work has evolved and changed over time. His most recent works revealed an increasingly loose, even impulsive brushwork, and an almost watercolour-like lucidity," Duval continued. "There is also a fresh concern with the marriage between sun, sea and land that takes place during the setting of the sun. The resulting luminosity appears as a creative current throughout his recent works, whether depicting closely tangled woods or vast open shorelines. Light is the unifying element, even in his few quiet nocturnes."
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“Night Wood” by Don Resnick, 1999. Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches. Hofstra University Museum Collections, Gift of Howard and Helen Shaw, HU2013.21.
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"Essence of Place" was curated by Karen T. Albert, the Museum’s associate director of exhibitions and collections. She pointed out that "Resnick’s deep commitment to the environment is evidenced through his visual messages that urge us to protect our estuaries, forests, fields and coastlines," according to the exhibition release.
A fully illustrated catalog, Don Resnick: Essence of Place, accompanies the exhibit and features essays by the artist’s son David Resnick, Acting Commissioner, NYC Department of Design and Construction, and son-in-law, Howard Shaw, President and Director of the Hammer Galleries in New York City.
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“Flight” by Don Resnick, 1985. Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches. Hofstra University Museum Collections, Gift of David Resnick and Iwonka Piotrowska, HU2012.53.
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An interactive touch screen kiosk in the gallery will provide supplemental material on the artist’s process as well as his traditional artistic training steeped in landscape painting and modernist directions influenced by studies with both Raphael Soyer and Oscar Kokoshka.
The Hofstra University Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Approximately 4% of museums nationwide have earned this distinguished recognition, according to the museum.
BASIC FACTS: "Don Resnick: Essence of Place" opens on May 13, 2014 and continues through Aug. 15, 2014 at the Emily Lowe Gallery at Hofstra University Museum. An Opening Reception takes place on Thursday, May 15, at 4:30 p.m. at the Emily Lowe Gallery.
The Hofstra University Museum is located at 112 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549. The Emily Lowe Gallery is located at Emily Lowe Hall on the South Campus. www.hofstra.edu/museum.
HAMPTONS INSIDER: Don Resnick's art was exhibited at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY in 1991 and 1993. (The gallery has since closed, following the death of its founder).
Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), the Russian-born American painter, lived and worked in Hampton Bays, N.Y. as part of a group of Russian émigrés who set up camp in the Western Hamptons. They included David Burliuk, Nicolai Cikovsky and Soyer brothers Moses and Raphael.
RELATED: "That Other East End Artists Colony" by David Everitt for The New York Times. Published Feb.10, 2008.
"Parrish East End Stories: David Burliuk" published on the Parrish Art Museum's website.
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