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UPCOMING SHOW PREVIEW / RJD GALLERY
8/24-9/24 Bridgehampton, NYMirrors of Desire
O
n August 24, RJD Gallery in
Bridgehampton, New York, will
open the new exhibition Mirrors of Desire.
According to gallery curator MAGO, the
exhibition “includes artists who project
their focus on creating art within their
own mirrored worlds, surreal, and holding
a deep desire for the viewer to coexist
in their painterly, and uniquely created,
altered physical reality of time and space.”
Among them are Mary Jane Ansell, Phillip
Thomas, Katie O’Hagan, HarmoniaRosales, Juan Béjar, Jorge Santos and
Jamie Wyeth.
Ansell has always been inspired by “the
irrepressible inner strength and spirit of
young girls, and in our current climate
we have some extraordinary examples of
young girls with a clear-eyed grasp of the
future, demonstrating more determination
and conviction for positive change than
their adult counterparts,” she says. “They
are the inspiration for [Invincible III].”
Santos’ paintings Night Owl andSwimmer are two from his latest series
that mark a return to the artist’s youth
in Angola. “I tried to capture the beauty,
simplicity and mystery that held me
captive then,” he says, “and still holds me
captive now.”
O’Hagan’s painting Persistence was
based on frustration she was feeling with
a personal situation. “I realized I was stuck
in a negative pattern that kept me from
progressing and led to regular feelings of
futility,” she says of the scene depicting a
woman attempting to light a candle with a
match, over and over again. As the painting
came together, she says, “I began to see it
more as about determination than futility.”
Now that the work is fi nished, O’Hagan
sees it about her tendency to dig into narra-
tives and fi x problems with single-mind-
edness. O’Hagan explains that she doesn’t
always notice other issues that need to be
resolved that someone on the outside sees.
“In this case the open window behind me,”
she says of the work. “This is often how the
process works for me. The image comes
fi rst and the inspiration reveals itself over1 2