“Sustainable Beauty,” a five-person show at Candita Clayton Studio is about pretty nature and pretty flowers. Jenny Brown (pictured above) makes delicate ink and collage drawings of bouquets of blood red and inky black flowers. Mimo Gordon Riley paints impressionist trees with sun shining through the branches like stained glass. Kate Blacklock photographs arrangements of hydrangeas and other blossoms. It’s all rather saccharine. Didi Suydam is in this same sweet, sweet territory with her digital photos of cherry blossoms and reflecting lakes in which she inverses the colors so they resemble negatives. This inversion freshens the theme. The leaves of a forest all turn blue. What looks to have originally been a setting sun becomes a black hole. In “Flash Dream,” tree trunks turn icy white against a lilac background. Here and there are turquoise smudges. The results are painterly and slick with a wintery chill.
“Sustainable Beauty,” Candita Clayton Studio, 999 Main Street, unit 105, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Sept. 23 to 31, 2011.
Mimo Gordon Riley, “Dreamkeepers.”