‘Anne Ducote’
Anne Ducote's solo exhibition at Hyde Park Bar & Grill covers landscapes and passages that lead the viewer toward a welcoming valley or pathway
Reviewed by Benné Rockett, Fri., Jan. 20, 2006
Anne Ducote
Hyde Park Bar & Grill, through Jan. 29
Anne Ducote has been the art director at Hyde Park Bar & Grill for the last 10 years. In that time, this is the second opportunity she has had to exhibit her own work in this venue. The oils on panel and canvas she has selected for her exhibition are reflective of her interest in color, composition, and glazing. A large sampling covers landscapes and passages that lead the viewer toward a welcoming valley or pathway. The landscapes are painted in a style known as luminism, those paintings which exude a quality of light from within the scene. Fascinated with the world and its different cultures, Ducote has used photographs from her travels to inspire works that are intended to promote tranquility. Portal, a shadowed stucco hallway space with a view of a body of water, provides a sense that the structure is alive with change. Doorways, windows, arches, passages, and halls are places of transition and possibilities. Mystery takes hold as doors open into other worlds and archways transform whoever passes through them. But if you desire a more contemporary composition, there are narrative pieces, though fewer in number, which offer a slight degree of angst. Buoyant is indicative of the narrative painting that depicts an everyday sort of event. A couple, floating leisurely in the water, look directly at the viewer. Though not fictional, the painted image is metaphorical and rhetorical. This is an event that occurred in the life of one couple but can occur in anyone's life. Traditional landscapes and narrative genre paintings seem to be in danger of demise in contemporary art circles. These types of painting have fallen into such disrepute amongst artists that no one seems to be the least concerned about their disappearance. What artists like Ducote offer is a lovely, well executed, and compositionally solid work that does not require harsh intellectualization. Sometimes people just want to feel happy – always and in all ways.
