The Gallery Next Door

A random walk in my neighborhood brought me to a local art gallery, less than two blocks from my house. I usually make plans well in advance to visit exhibitions at galleries, museums or attend fairs. Art is always far away and implies driving or flying ...Paris, Miami, Houston...

The day of my visit, Octavia Gallery was filled with Sheila McInerney's works. The abstract artist from New York City creates a Jungian world made of stained, bleached paper, fabrics, threads, watercolors.
Her dreamy compositions represent the collective history of our subconscious.  

The next exhibition features Jeffrey Pitt, an artist who, with  graphic mastery, creates hypnotic paintings using sometimes a cartographic language, sometimes oriental motives or a simple primitive language with colored stones. He engages the viewer to look closer to discover embedded symbols. For example in Animals and Ecosystems, what appears to be a maze from afar is a complex interaction between shapes of animals, vegetation and water.

A website browsing cannot replace a walk to the local art gallery. The visit guarantees to "wash the dust of daily life off our souls", to quote Picasso.

photographs courtesy Octavia Gallery

"The First Night of Sleep", Sheila McInerney
"Spontaneous Generation" Jeffrey Pitt
Picasso's quote: "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls"