“Line, Color and Surface” exhibit curated by Mel Leipzig at The Center for Contemporary Art

BEDMINSTER, N.J. - Dec. 22, 2014 - PRLog -- “Line, Color and Surface” is the first exhibit of the New Year at The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, NJ. It opens on Friday, January 9th and remains on view through February 21, 2015. The public is invited to an opening reception for the exhibit and artist talk on Friday, January 9^th from 6-8 p.m.

The exhibit is curated by well-known New Jersey painter Mel Leipzig, and features the work of four artists: Harry Naar (Lawrenceville, NJ), Sue Ferguson Gussow (New York, NY), Geoffrey Dorfman (Trenton, NJ) and Tracey Jones (Trenton, NJ). According to Leipzig, “At first glance it might seem that the grouping of these four artists, two concerned with drawing from nature and two abstract painters, is disparate. On closer inspection it can be noted that all four artists, no matter what medium they use, be it the oil paints of Geoff Dorfman and Tracey Jones, the charcoal and pastel drawings of Sue Ferguson Gussow or the ink drawings of Harry Naar, exhibit a deep appreciation of the textual richness and sensuous qualities of their chosen medium.”

Harry Naar’s work focuses on the still-life and the landscape, which in his words, “…continually stir my interest and offer me countless possibilities and constant scrutiny based upon direct observation from nature, psychological ideas derived from memory experience, and analytical organization.” Naar received a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art and an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. He also studied in Paris with the French painter Jean Helion. Naar has received numerous awards, scholarships and honors and his work has been featured in one person and group exhibits in galleries throughout New Jersey. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Morris Museum, The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, The Jersey City Museum, The Montclair Art Museum, The Noyes Museum of Art and many private and corporate collections. Naar is Professor of Fine Arts at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J.

Sue Ferguson Gussow is a figurative painter who works in a wide range of drawing and painting media, a graduate of The Cooper Union, Columbia University and holds a Masters of Fine Art from Tulane University. She is a Professor Emerita at The Cooper Union and has also taught, lectured or served as visiting critic at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Bennington, New York University, Maryland Art Institute, Parsons School of Design, the Frick Collection, Tulane University, Alfred University, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture and The Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark. Gussow's work is widely represented in the collections of various museums, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian, the Dallas Museum of Fine Art, the Minnesota Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Free Library, the Frick Collection archive and has been represented in the Museum of Modern Art lending collection.

Geoffrey Dorfman is a painter, writer, and musician. According to a 2005 Brooklyn Rail review, “Geoffrey Dorfman is an artist who has spent the better part of the last three and a half decades immersed in the implications of what it means to be painting now.” Dorfman received his BFA from Cooper Union and his MFA from Syracuse University. An Associate Professor at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, he has taught painting, drawing and modern culture there since 1978. He has also taught at the Parsons School of Design (Graduate Program) and served as visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Dartmouth College in 2000/01. His work has been exhibited widely and his articles have been published in Artforum and Stagebill magazines. He recently curated the, “Hans Hofmann: The Legacy,” exhibit at the Painting Center in New York City which received excellent reviews in the N.Y. Times, The N.Y. Sun, and The N.Y. Observer. Dorfman has a large oil painting in the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum of Art in Georgia and is represented by the Ober Gallery in Kent, CT. Also a musician, Dorfman has given full length solo concerts in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Bechstein Hall, the Marjorie Deane Little Theater at the Westside YMCA, Columbia University, Westminster Choir College, Stevens Institute of Technology and the Cooper Union.

Tracey Jones is a painter who has worked abstractly for many years. She has had five solo shows at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Chelsea and her work has also been shown at the Brata Gallery, the Max Hutchinson Gallery, A.I.R., the National Academy of Design Museum, the J. Johnson Gallery, the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota, Sideshow, and The Painting Center, among other venues. Most recently she was featured in a solo show at the Ober Gallery in Kent, Connecticut. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Arts, and Art in America. Jones received a BFA from Cooper Union in 1972 and an MFA from Syracuse University in 1974. Jones is Associate Professor, Performing and Creative Arts, at The College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Mel Leipzig lives in Trenton, and until recently taught painting and was a professor of art history at Mercer County Community College. He studied at the Cooper Union, Yale and Pratt and has had over fifty one-man shows. His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, among others. In 1996 he was one of the last individual artists to receive a grant in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006 he was elected to the National Academy.

The Center for Contemporary Art is located at 2020 Burnt Mills Road in Bedminster, NJ. (908) 234-2345 www.ccabedminster.org

Jpeg images are available upon request.