Blue Mountain Gallery to Display New Owen Gray Exhibit, 4/26

Owen Gray's recent paintings will be presented at the Blue Mountain Gallery in Chelsea, New York City April 26th-May 21st. World of Darkness, World of Light is Gray's 10th solo show at the Blue Mountain Gallery, which he has been a member of since 1992. Praised by critic Jed Perl of the New Republic for his "deft, fleet, subtly virtuosic brushwork that articulates shape and spirit with confidence and ease," Gray presents the viewer two worlds in these paintings. The first one looks up into a vast, rich darkness that encompasses fantastical flying creatures lit brightly from below. In the second world, the world of light, there is an emphasis on the vast sunlit world, where the open blue sky is inhabited by a dazzling array of winged creatures twirling and whirling every which way or down into the an aquatic netherworld where birds, insects, musical instruments and overturned boats inhabit a lush mysterious environment of dense vegetation. Gray's paintings have a Rococo panache, and are influenced and inspired by the ceilings of the Italian painter Tiepolo, as well as by Peter Brueghel, Hieronymus Bosch, and 17th century Dutch still life.

Born and raised in Wayland, Mass., Owen Gray studied as a young man at the Portland School of Art in Maine and the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA. In 1975, he moved to New York and took classes at the New York Studio School, where he studied with Nicholas Carone and Leland Bell.