City Gallery Artists Find A Way

There’s a clock on the back wall of City Gallery. It doesn’t have hands, and the numbers by and large have been replaced by abstract shapes. It’s a sign of how time has drifted away, and the expression on its face gives an unmistakable sense of mixed feelings. The piece, by artist Ruth Sack, is about the election season, the sense of anticipation and worry it has brought, but in another sense it sums up how so much of the last year felt — and how we look to this coming year with beleaguered hope.

Sack’s piece is part of ​“Perseverance: Three Artists Work Through Stressful Times” running now through Jan. 31. at City Gallery on Upper State Street. It features the work of Sack (a new member to the gallery), Susan Newbold, and Michael H. Zack, and as the title suggests, the show conveys how these artists have kept at their creative practices during these still extraordinary times.

Susan Newbold uses the mixed media of watercolor, watercolor pencil, graphite, and oil-based inks to convey not only the forms, but the energy of the landscapes she observes. ​“I live on the coast of Maine during the summer months, and for the last 35 years have continuously tried to capture Maine’s magic,” Newbold writes in an accompanying statement. ​“The combinations” of land formations and water, she continues, ​“are endless, and the poetry that results so worth the challenge…. The joy of this lifelong pursuit to communicate the wonder I experience when in these locations is what invigorates this work.”

“Invigorating” is a good way to describe it. At its most dynamic, the work still holds onto the idea of a landscape while seeming to convey the ways the natural forces are constantly reshaping what Newbold sees. This almost makes it a form of time travel; we get to see what the landscape may have looked like before, or what it may yet become.

Michael H. Zack has been drawn to using the forms of people, their silhouettes, for years. ​“Shorn of distinguishing facial features and clothing detail, they become anyone and everyone, yet they are uniquely individual and somewhat mysterious.” The figures are sometimes ​“based on people I know and have had the opportunity to observe as they go about their daily lives.” To Zack, they have a distinct personal narrative, but leaves it open to the viewer to interpret.

Zack produced earlier work in this vein in a printmaking studio, but he has not been able to get at that equipment during the pandemic. ​“This necessitated a return to painting, a transition that has been more difficult than I anticipated. It has been a slow process, but one that I think can be rewarding.” The change from printmaking to painting casts the subjects in a different light. The previous printed pieces, with their sharper lines and more muted colors, could be read as a study of individual isolation, even in crowds. The painted pieces, with their more varied textures and colors, bring with them more energy, movement, urgency — even a hint of danger.

Ruth Sack, who was at the gallery to discuss her pieces, said that she selected the works in the show from among what she had been working on for the past two years. Before that, she had been doing artwork that explored aging and illness. Then a friend of hers died, and she bought a piece of art from her estate, a painting that used fluorescent paint.

“It changed everything, and I decided to create happier things,” she said, ​“because it made me happier. Why not use color to affect my mind and express my mind?” The use of a bright color palette, and fluorescent colors in particular, ​“adds to the fun.”

The more sculptural pieces are made from clay stretched over metal; both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces use wax encaustic, a medium she has been working in for years (she is a member of the regional artists’ group New England Wax). Among the brightly colored pieces are one that was a direct response to the Covid-19 outbreak. Others, she said, were about memories, with the dazzling spirals evoking the colors of specific times and places in her life. One spiral drew its hues from her memories of going to college in the 1960s — the colors of walls and clothing.

“I used to wear fluorescent colors,” she said.

Another spiral was based on the colors she has in her house today — what ​“I see around me. It makes me feel comfortable.”

In every case, what draws her to working with wax encaustic is the combination of deliberation and chance that goes into every piece. Each one starts with an idea, a plan. But then the movement of the wax isn’t entirely predictable. As she works with it, ​“it takes me somewhere. It does its job as wax,” she said. So she has learned to make a plan while knowing that the piece will not go according to plan.

“Isn’t that life?” she said. The trick is making it fun. For Sack, it’s also the key to giving her purposefully hopeful pieces depth. ​“If it’s grounded in something real and solid, it can be as hopeful as you like,” she said.

“Perseverance” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Jan. 31. Check the gallery’s website for details and more information about hours.