2010 Exhibitions at L'Orangerie Gallery

3rd Year Anniversary Celebration

Opening reception July 10th, 2010 6-8 pm

What’s the difference between northern light and southern light? Well-known North Fork artist Carolyn Francis has been working on an answer for the last year. The results will be viewable at the July 10 opening of the summer 2010 exhibiting season at L’Orangerie Fine Art Gallery in Greenport.

Francis spent much of the last year in Charleston, S.C., studying light as it plays on that city’s lovely structures, marshes and waters. The July 10 show will feature new works from Charleston as well as North Fork landscapes and few other surprises. "I have been concentrating on aerial perspective, the transitions in value and color, which adds greater depth to the scene," said Ms. Francis.

Carolyn Francis studied at Pratt Institute and the Woodstock School of Art. Her style is realism brushed by impressionism, which she feels is the way beholders actually experience nature. The melding yields land, sea and cloudscapes “plush” in color and texture, in the words of the Charleston City Paper.

L’Orangerie is a gallery unlike any other. Set in a charming 1870 Italianate house and surrounded by beautiful gardens, it stands beside the studio of Patrice Bertin, L’Orangerie’s founder and a world-renowned art conservator. Its name harkens to its magnificent 1617 namesake at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris, and to Musee de L’Orangerie, where Claude Monet entrusted his water lilies.

The July 10 opening will be a champagne reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibit will run through Aug. 2. The gallery is located at 633 First Street in Greenport.

Carolyn Francis — The Good Old Days

2009 Exhibitions at L'Orangerie Gallery

August: Private Collection

“Private Collection,” paintings, prints, posters and more collected by Patrice Bertin during his career in New York City as a painting conservator, opens at L’Orangerie Fine Art Gallery in Greenport with a wine reception on Saturday, Aug. 29.

The “more” includes a collection of the glamorous and erotic photos that won critical acclaim for photographer/commercial art director Guy Le Baube. Also featured will be Joni Scully, whose paintings are now in the Cahoon Museum of Art, and recent work by Carolyn Francis.

Some of the artists:
Alexander Calder: Work by the late abstract kinetic sculptor is also showing currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Albert D. Smith:  The late New York City artist’s other exhibits include the Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Andre Wilder: French-born impressionist, 1871-1965.  

Man Ray: The late photographer/painter was a key figure in Dada and Surrealist movements and was named one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century by ARTnews.

Also featured: Large, decorative posters, including Chapeaux Mossant by Cappiello Leonetto.

The show runs through Sept. 20. Gallery hours are Saturdays, noon-6 p.m., Sundays, 1-5 p.m., and by appointment.

A. Wilder — La Madeleine

July: Local Color

Artists have been falling in love with the North Fork for a long time. With the light, the water, the farms, the marshes, the harbors. That love is celebrated in a new show titled “Local Color,” opening July 19 at L’Orangerie Fine Art Gallery in Greenport.

Compared to some other forks, said gallery owner Patrice Bertin, on the North you can still find peace and quiet, unclogged roads, natural beauty, and restaurant reservations. You can also find affordable oil paintings, a windfall in downtrending times.

In addition to the signature lush land and seascapes by gallery director Carolyn Francis, “Local Color” features work by Keith Mantell of Riverhead and Deborah Palmer of Sag Harbor.

“I want to capture all of these places before we lose them,” said Mr. Mantell, former director of Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton. One of the ways he does the capturing is by manipulating images preserved on Polaroid film. He describes that style as impressionistic, but influenced more by Edwin Land than Van Gogh.

Though she lives in Sag Harbor, Ms. Palmer said, “I’ve always loved the North Fork. It’s so unspoiled.” Of late she’s been devoting large amounts of time to getting her neo-impressionist view of it on canvas – especially Orient. Much of her work is structural, focusing on the house, barns and outbuildings of the village. “There’s no end to the wonderful subjects I’m finding,” she said.

“Local Color” opens with a wine-and-cheese reception on July 19, 1 to 5 p.m. At least one of the artists will be plein air painting in the garden during the event. The show runs through Aug. 14.

L’Orangerie is a gallery like no other on the East End. Set in a charming 1850 Italianate house and surrounded by beautiful gardens, it is adjacent to the studio of its founder, world-renowned art conservator Patrice Bertin. His partner Carolyn Francis is a former Manhattan model/actress who has since become a dedicated artist, studying at Pratt Institute and the Woodstock School of Art and exhibiting frequently.

Deborah Palmer - Spring Shadows

June 1st - July 15th

Joni Scully - Bell Flowers and Little Limes

30" x 24"

Passion and Metaphor
A Retrospective of Paintings by Joni Scully

L'Orangerie Gallery brings to Greenport 20+ oil paintings by this New York City artist who has lived and worked in her studio loft on Canal Street for 33 years. Seven floors above the teeming life and noise of the city streets, Joni Scully has created a wonderland of dogs, doves and a fire escape garden and from here are born her visions of Landscapes, Cityscapes, Still Lives and Portraits.

For Joni, a painter's painter, the subject is only the excuse to make a painting-to make Art. Her main focus is on letting the painting lead her into the world of composing, making fresh shapes and finding new metaphors for what she observes. Her work is representational, and there are no illustrations, sentiments, politics or hidden messages here. She quotes Picasso, "Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do what it wants."

A native of Pittsburgh, Pa., raised by a poet father who instilled in her her first sense of the importance of composition and poetic device, and an artist mother, very early Joni was drawing from her mother's book, "The Complete Etchings of Goya", discovering the colors of Matisse among her mother's paints, charmed to distraction by the reproductions of Dufy and Van Gogh that were pinned in her mother's studio... and already at home with the aroma of oil and turpentine. In her bedroom her mother had hung a large copy of a Renoir — "It was of a lady playing the piano and running along her dress I remember I saw the most beautiful odd black shape anchoring her in place...it gave me chills...it was so 'right'... I wanted to do what these painters did more than anything in the world", Joni says, "I wanted to make pictures that gave me the same passionate rush and feeling of lastingness I got from theirs, this sensation so magical, so ineffable-they had stamped the world with wonder!"

Eventually she received a BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University and was awarded a scholarship to the Yale University Summer School of Music and art. There she met her future teacher, Knox Martin and then took classes with him at The Art Student's League in NYC. She worked with him seven more years in a loft on Duane Street in Tribeca with a small group of other young painters. "Knox and the Metropolitan Museum fully opened my 'eyes' . Some kind of light bulb went on and never went off. I became intimate with the works of Cezanne, Titian, Velasquez, the Fayum mummy portraits- so many masterpieces from so many cultures. I was seeing deeper — I was 'getting it' — what they did, the composition, the poetry and that 'rightness'. When this door opened for me, I couldn't wait to go in and meet my own metaphors! What I do is now mine. I have no name for it — I only know I follow in the tradition of the masters who inspired me and I come from my heart. I am always surprised at the result. As a child when I played, I drew pictures. Now when I make pictures, I play."

In this exhibit, under the auspices of Patrice Bertin, a cultured Parisian and Art Conservator — no stranger to these masters — Joni Scully offers us a view of what she has discovered.

Joni Scully - Passion and Metaphor

Above: Roosevelt Island 26" x 30"

Opening Reception July 18th 6-9 pm.  

Show runs through August 9th.

For information, call 631-477-2633.

Eastern Illumination by Carolyn Francis

Landscapes capturing the light and beauty of Eastern Long Island

A gallery unlike all the others will celebrate its grand opening in Greenport on June 14.
Its name, L’Orangerie, harkens to its magnificent 1617 namesake at the Palace of the Louvre in Paris, and to Musee de L’Orangerie, where Claude Monet entrusted his water lilies.
Greenport’s own L’Orangerie was created by world-renowned art conservator Patrice Bertin. On the site is the studio in which he does his restoration work. But on June 14 the focus will be the debut of the gallery next to it, set in a charming 1870 Italianate house and surrounded by beautiful gardens.
That’s only part of the romance of this story. The other part is linked to the artist whose work will be featured in the grand opening.
Carolyn Francis was a model in Manhattan 30 years ago when she met Patrice Bertin. Five years ago, while walking their dogs in Central Park, they met again and fell in love.
In the interim she had become a serious artist, studying at Pratt Institute and the Woodstock School of Art. Her style is realism brushed by impressionism, which she feels is the way beholders actually experience nature. The melding yields land, sea and cloudscapes “plush” in color and texture, in the words of the Charleston City Paper.
L’Orangerie’s opening show, titled “Eastern Illumination,” will feature 31 landscapes capturing the light and beauty of Eastern Long Island.
The June 14 grand opening will be a memorable sensory experience. Visitors will walk amid orange trees, viewing paintings displayed on the gallery’s orange-tinted walls, and then may take their mimosas to the garden for a peaceful idyll beside the pond and fountain.
There’s little doubt that Louis XIV would have approved.

Carolyn Francis - Eastern Illumination

Above: Late Afternoon, Shelter Island 22 x 28

June 14: Artist Reception, 5-9 p.m.
The show will run until July 15.
For information, call 631-477-2633.