Like many New Englanders, I was recently reminded how bright it gets when there’s about a foot of snow everywhere. My eyelids haven’t been much help AS the light shines through and multicolored sunspots remind me that the snow is still there — and probably will be till March.
And as my eyes adjusted to the soft interior light of the Newport Art Museum’s Griswold House, I again saw sunspots. But this time, they were in the form of Pamela Granbery’s watercolor paintings and mixed media works in the show “Radiant States,” on view until Sunday, May 31.
Her pieces, many of them painted on white canvas, are beautifully-composed abstract scenes of lush, vibrant colors — the same purples, oranges, blue-blacks, greens and yellows that you see in the split-second after a flashbulb pops in your eyes.
“Granbery approaches color as feeling,” read text on the gallery wall. “Pigment soaks, drifts, and breathes across the surface until form and space begin to dissolve.”
This idea could easily have been executed poorly, looking tacky or like online art slop. But with Granbery’s trained eye for color and composition, each work is a flash of a moment. That flash suggests a scene or landscape but then dissolves back into color and canvas. A fleeting feeling.