Timothy Schmitz
Timothy Schmitz:
When Things Surface
(Downtown Gallery) | September 3 – September 26
Timothy Schmitz's process-driven abstract paintings achieve aesthetic purity through the mastery of complex techniques. Using exotic materials, including a combination of ground marble and oil on panel, the artist produces quietly dramatic works whose richly crackled textures, glistening surfaces, and incendiary hues evoke the complementary dynamism and stillness of ancient ceramics. Informed by rigorous experimentation and the embrace of chance procedures, Schmitz's art is distinguished by its uncommon compositional harmonies and understated expressiveness.

John Fincher
John Fincher:
Enduring Terrain
(Railyard Gallery) | July 30 – September 5
Honored as the official artist for the cover of The Santa Fe Opera's 2010 Season Program and its pair of Season Posters, John Fincher has for more than 40 years created art that memorializes - indeed celebrates - what the artist modestly terms "the trappings of the American West." Exercising a profound economy of means, his works derive startling emotional resonance from a combination of rigorously balanced composition, nuanced brushwork, dramatic shadowing, and the application of intense points of contrasting colors to punctuate significant visual elements. His images of towering poplars, pine limbs set against crystalline skies, richly hued desert hillsides, the array of colors within canopies of aspens turning, and aggressively cropped prickly pears unravel the manifold cultural meanings inscribed within representations of the mythic Western Frontier.