Opening Reception for Brian Freer’s Natural Causes, Art Rosenbaum Trailer

JOHN LEE MATNEY CORDIALLY INVITES YOU TO ATTEND:

THE OPENING RECEPTION FOR BRIAN FREER’S NATURAL CAUSES

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 6-9pm

Meet the artist and enjoy wine and light hors d'oeuvres

Learn More/ Join the Guest List

READ THE ARTICLE IN THE DAILY PRESS

Natural Causes is a collection of images taken over the past 2 years. Shot mostly during the pandemic, the collection consists of swampy landscapes, mountain vistas and the small details within them, captured to evoke our primal psyche. The selected pieces represent a period of intense spiritual change for the artist, and a pivotal internalization of the impermanence and precious quality of life.

Pictured: Natural Causes 1, 2022, Video projection and Beech Bark with Shadows, College Woods, Williamsburg, 2020, Archival pigment print, VIEW ON ARTSY

Brian Freer

Artist's Statement

Photography is a meditative art allowing me to subtract everything that doesn’t matter at that moment. I shoot details to reflect on the shape and form and texture while my objective is to empty my mind of everything except for what’s right in front of me. I'd like the viewer to be able to see it as close to how I saw it and that means it should fill their field of view. I take pictures of whatever I’m drawn toward when I have a camera — it can be anything.

Brian Freer, Stonehenge II, Archival Pigment Print, England 2022, 24x16, Edition of 1-15 + 2AP, or Lightbox(cropped), 6 x 3.28 ft

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Purchasing Art at the Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery to Support Local and National Artists

The Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery is a local, independently-owned art gallery in Williamsburg, Virginia. We are committed to supporting artists, both local and national, by providing a space for them to exhibit their work and opportunities for their work to be shown in museums nationwide. In these challenging times, we need your support more than ever. Purchasing art from our gallery helps us continue to provide programming and a space for artists to exhibit their work and allows us to support them financially. We have art from local and national artists and works by artists associated with William and Mary, Christopher Newport University, and Old Dominion University.

John Lee Matney, May 2022

TRAILER RELEASED FOR A NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM PROJECT WITH BRIAN FREER

Art Rosenbaum in his studio, VIEW TRAILER

THE ART OF ART

The Life and Work of Art Rosenbaum

Directed by Brian Freer

Written by Brian Freer and John Lee Matney

VIEW TRAILER

The Art of Art is the story of a man humbly attempting to stamp his place within the history of American folklore and art. We will unravel the life and work of Art Rosenbaum — painter, musician and Grammy winning documentary archivist. From his birth in Ogdensburg, New York, to exhibiting his life’s work in museums and galleries worldwide. We’ll cover his journey to becoming an influential figure within the Athens art community and the intersection between his love of American folk music and his masterful contemporary allegorical paintings.

TREATMENT The film will cover the life and career of Art Rosenbaum and his influence in Contemporary art, specifically the art scene in Athens, Georgia. The film will dive into Art’s relationship with his wife — painter and photographer Margo Rosenbaum — to understand the creative dynamics between them. We will interview artists, musicians, curators, collectors, and other key figures in Rosenbaum’s life to reveal how his work has influenced the community around him and the works of other artists he has taught and mentored. We will weave in the story of the efforts of John Lee Matney — Matney Gallery in Williamsburg, Virginia — to champion Rosenbaum’s work and promote it to collectors of Contemporary American Art.

The anchor in this film will be the conversations with Rosenbaum. As with many documentaries, this will be a discovery process. We will investigate the challenges, triumphs, disappointments, and potential contradictions within his life to build a psychological profile of Rosenbaum and the intention and complexities of his work. We’ll attempt to arrange Rosenbaum’s paintings and music in the context of the post- WWII era in which he grew up and explore how it shaped the man and artist. Major events in Rosenbaum’s life will be covered using archival photography, b-roll, interview footage and voice-over narration. We will use Rosenbaum’s paintings to illustrate the story of his life as told by key people over the span of his life and by Rosenbaum himself. The score and sound design will be punctuated by Rosenbaum’s own music along with the music he recorded and preserved throughout his career. We will interview people close to Rosenbaum — musicians, artists, family, collectors and curators to deepen our understanding of Rosenbaum.

Locations including Athens, GA, Williamsburg, VA, New York, Germany, etc. will become supporting characters in the film.

The intention is to produce a compelling feature-length film about an artist who attempted and succeeded in stamping his place in the history of twentieth-century American folklore and art.

CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION

Art Rosenbaum, Rakestraw's Dream, 1993, Oil on linen, 78 × 106 in, 198.1 × 269.2 cm. PRICE BY REQUEST

MORE ABOUT ART ROSENBAUM FROM THE MATNEY GALLERY

Born in upstate New York in 1938, Art Rosenbaum is an acclaimed artist, folklorist, and teacher active from the 1960s to the present. He studied art history and painting at Columbia University during the waning years of high modernism and was part of the generation that re-introduced figuration and narrative into postwar art. Rosenbaum is best known for his expressive realism and for his significant contributions to the American South. Many projects include his wife, painter, and photographer, Margo Newmark Rosenbaum.

Rosenbaum lived in the historic West Village of Manhattan in the 1960s. He hosted a radio show during his years at Columbia. Bob Dylan was a regular listener and colleague in the legendary folk clubs. Continuing his interest in Americana, Rosenbaum brought critical attention to Southern culture during his years in Athens, Georgia, from the late 1970s to the present. A professor at the University of Georgia, Rosenbaum taught alongside painters such as Elaine de Kooning, Alice Neel, Richard Olsen, and Judith McWillie. He mentored numerous creative luminaries to emerge from Athens during this fruitful era, including Michael Stipe of REM. As discussed in Grace Elizabeth Hale’s lauded 2020 book Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture, Rosenbaum helped bring serious attention to many now-revered folk artists and musicians.

Paintings like Rakestraw’s Dream (1993) and Howard Finster with Couple and Fire (2006) feature the Southerners he championed in complex compositions. Outsider artists, folk musicians, and local hipsters populate Rosenbaum’s large, energetic canvases and richly detailed drawings. Rosenbaum’s style and technical prowess reveals his deep engagement with art history, ranging from the Italian Mannerists to American Regionalism. Rosenbaum’s work often includes subjects observed in his extensive travels throughout Europe, India, and Latin America. India Triptych (1998), for example, shows traditional hand drummers alongside figures in traditional saris and contemporary sports jerseys. His abstractions, such as The Way of the Sea (2019), showcases his expressive style in a raw, formally sophisticated form that echoes his early work of the late 1960s and '70s.

Rosenbaum was named the first Wheatley Professor in Fine Arts Emeritus at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia. In 2003, he received the prestigious Governor of Georgia’s Award in the Humanities. His collection of folk music, “The Art of Field Recording Volumes I: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum,” won a Grammy for Best Historical Album in 2008. Rosenbaum’s work is part of many prominent private and public collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Georgia Museum of Art.

CONTACT US ABOUT UPCOMING PROJECTS

Linda Matney Gallery is dedicated to developing and curating exhibitions of innovative emerging artists and the work of more established national and international artists, including works of painting, installation, video, photography, sculpture, and performance. Named after Linda Matney, who lost her battle with cancer in 2001, John Lee Matney and the Matney family have established a research-based contemporary gallery. John Lee Matney develops thematic group shows and collaborative art projects with international and American artists focusing on art collectors in Virginia and elsewhere.

Thank you for considering the Linda Matney Gallery

John Lee Matney, Curator

Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery
5435 Richmond Road, Suite A
Williamsburg, Virginia 23188

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