Press Release: LOCAL ARTIST AN EXHIBITIONIST?

BENNINGTON, Vt. — …Apparently the answer is yes, because Bennington painter and multimedia artist Viola Moriarty shows new work in two local Vermont venues this summer, and five exhibitions right over the Massachusetts border opening in the next five months.

“This has been a year of quieter, more introspective work,” Moriarty says, “primarily still lifes and figure works — and study with other artist friends, experimenting with new media and working on my drawing skills. So, the exhibitions coming up relate to that kind of work, like a string of pearls: smaller, more intimate exhibitions in some of my favorite local venues showing personal works that are meaningful to me and my artistic process.”

Moriarty’s multi-venue opus begins with “Recent works, 2010” at South Street Café, 105 South Street in Bennington, on Sunday, August 1. This month-long show includes oil paintings of flowers from her lush garden, and figure works — including a series of small works titled “Nudes on Guest Checks,” and Moriarty’s self-proclaimed “favorite new pen and ink painting, ‘DJ.’" An artist’s reception is at South Street Café on Friday, August 13, from 5 to 7 p.m.

“As a walking person and ‘townie,’ South Street is the hub, not only for coffee and great snacks, but for community,” says Moriarty, who has hung an annual exhibition in the café since 2003 — with the exception of 2007, when she was undergoing chemotherapy. Moriarty is also one of 50 exhibiting artists in the 13th annual North Bennington Art Park, which opened on July 17 and runs through Sunday, October 10. Her contribution, “La tortuga y la planta,” a new work in reed pen & inks — inspired by a taxidermied turtle in the Savoy Hollow General Store (Savoy, Mass.) — hangs in the North Bennington Train Station Museum on Main Street / Route 67, North Bennington.

Of her bevy of local exhibitions, Moriarty says, “I’ve always liked showing my works in local business and community venues. One of my best friends calls me an ‘exhibitionist’ because I show my work in so many local venues. I relate strongly to small business owners and non-profit organizations. There’s the mythology of the lonely artist working all alone, but it’s almost never been true. Artists have always been working for and with organizations that value art, that want their walls and space to say something meaningful and to support a handmade thing. The people and organizations with which I collaborate have this reverence for handmade life and work.”

Moriarty’s life, too, is steeped in her art, particularly after a long battle with breast cancer in 2007 inspired her to shift her priorities to enable her growth as an artist. Now, “I'm either painting or thinking about painting,” she says. “It's the mechanism through which I process information and experience. I see the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and it makes me think even more sharply about paint disposal, and not use any toxic solvents in my work. I can't solve the big things happening, but I can live my life along the same axis of decision-making. It’s very satisfying to respond to inspiration or to a visual problem, and just work intuitively. I don't really plan. I respond to what I feel with a paintbrush. I'm still the same ready-fire-aim person I've always been. ”She adds, “At first I was just happy to put a mark on the canvas. Frankly, I still am. But I also have an agreement with myself about what matters to me in the construction of a piece, and that is inner life. Either that brushstroke or color contributes to the inner life of the painting, or I brutally take the palette knife to it. A fair amount of paint gets scraped off. Sometimes the paintings that look the most spontaneous are the ones that have suffered major attacks by the palette knife. And then there are those drawings completed in six minutes that say everything that needs to be said. When that happens, and it's not very often, I'm just grateful.”

Visit vimorpainter.wordpress.com for more information about Moriarty, her work, these exhibits and five shows opening in nearby Berkshire County, Mass., in the next five months.

Images 1 & 2: "Nude on Guest Check 1" and "Nude on Guest Check 2" by Viola Moriarty are included in “Recent works, 2010” at South Street Café, 105 South Street in Bennington, Vt., in a month-long show beginning Sunday, August 1. Join Moriarty in an artist’s reception at South Street Café on Friday, August 13, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Image 3:"Flowers in bottles on red tablecloth" by Viola Moriarty is included in “Recent works, 2010” at South Street Café, 105 South Street in Bennington, Vt., in a month-long exhibit beginning Sunday, August 1.

Join Moriarty in an artist’s reception at South Street Café on Friday, August 13, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Image 4:“La tortuga y la planta” by Viola Moriarty is now on view at the in the North Bennington Train Station Museum on Main Street / Route 67, North Bennington, Vt. Moriarty is one of 50 exhibiting artists in the 13th annual North Bennington Art Park, which opened on July 17 and runs through Sunday, October 10.

All images courtesy Viola Moriarty