SANTA FE, NM.- Gerald Peters Gallery is presenting, GRAY SALT—LOST IN AH-SHI-SLE-PAH an exhibition of new work by Scott Kelley. His detailed watercolor and gouache paintings of animals, birds, and other objects from nature are inspired by his travels in New Mexico. Drawn to extreme places, Kelley brings his own unique vision of the Southwest, at once playful, imaginative, and elegantly rendered.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why New Mexico was so oddly familiar. I drove and drove - 2,600 miles in 10 days! - and still, I couldn't place it. The feeling was particularly strong at Ah Shi Sle Pah, getting lost amongst the hoodoos and chocolate mushrooms, watching the tumbleweeds roll by along the playa. And then, it hit me: Krazy Kat! I have lived with those cartoons my whole life - Krazy and Ignatz must have really put the desert in my head, because everywhere I looked, it was Kokonino County. The mesas, the tortured little trees and cactus, the armadillos and coyotes - it was like being in an endless Krazy Kat Sunday strip. It was all - all of it - completely unexpected, beguiling and even, at times, seemingly very much divorced from reality.

Scott Kelley received a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. He then attended The Slade School of Fine Art in London, and was a fellow at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. After completing his fellowship in Houston, Kelley moved to New York City and began working for artist Julian Schnabel. Kelley began drawing and painting from nature upon moving to Long Island where he was inspired by the natural world around him. Kelley now lives on Peaks Island, Maine, where he works from his home studio.




Gerald Peters Gallery is also presenting an exhibition of new work by Penelope Gottlieb. In her paintings, Gottlieb reconsiders John James Audubon’s idyllic representations of natural history and continues to expand her series of vivid, colorful and thought provoking paintings depicting extinct, invasive and endangered plants.

“My intention is to draw the viewer into my work with the seduction of beauty. Closer inspection reveals a difficulty in navigating a problematic relationship between flora and fauna. We are only as strong as these birds, these blossoms. We are all part of a fragile system and beauty can be a voice of strength. By appropriating the iconic work of John James Audubon, I have an opportunity to contrast my contemporary feelings of unease and concern regarding the natural world with his 19th century sense of unending abundance.

I was also inspired to include my early interest in Vanitas, the hidden signs and symbols injected into early Dutch and Flemish still life paintings, as an opportunity to layer in references to my research and historical correlations.”

Penelope Gottlieb is an Emmy-award winning Motion Picture Title Designer and fine artist. After receiving her BFA from the Art Center College for Design in Pasadena, California, Penelope Gottlieb went on to earn her MFA from the University of California in Santa Barbara where she currently lives and works. Penelope Gottlieb is a painter who has uprooted the tradition of flower painting formally and thematically. In her Invasive Plants series, Gottlieb appropriates and significantly alters existing digital prints from the John James Audubon archive. Gottlieb depicts the ravages of a contemporary ecological phenomenon wherein non-native species are introduced and overtake the balance of its delicate ecosystem.