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Art in a Time of Contagion

A Triptych of Titans in the Local Arts Scene

Article by Melinda Gipson

Photography by Hann Livingston, Charlotte Geary

Originally published in Leesburg Lifestyle

For four years, it has been Jim Sisley’s joy to preside over TRYST Gallery at 312 East Market St. in Leesburg. His satisfaction derives not because it is terribly lucrative, but because he understands that art, to be fully appreciated, must be seen in person.

On October 17, he’s curating a benefit art auction for Loudoun Cares that will bend his rule just a bit – allowing mobile bidding to accommodate more buyers – but that will still afford hundreds of the best local artists the opportunity to show their work live and in person. Knowing Jim, we trust it will be legendary. The artist tryptic that follows is just a glimpse of what you’ll see there.

Jim Sisley: The Curator

“Buying local art is not a financial play. Local art is bought because people experience that connection,” from seeing the work in 3-D. Most art bought locally is purchased to go with a chair in The Home Store or Pier One, and will be worthless the moment it leaves the store, he laments. “Whereas, my hope is that when people buy local art, there’s a provenance or a story that goes along with it that they can tell their children and grandchildren, and it will mean something to the family as they hold onto that piece for generations.”

Jim’s own work ranges from the very figurative – cityscapes with people and lots of geometrical lines and angles – to heroic scale paintings celebrating macabre figures from Dia De Los Muertos, to abstract mixed media. As if to prove his point, he says, “It’s very difficult to talk or write about visual art because it’s a visual medium.”

*TRYST Gallery is still open from Monday to Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and currently features work by Alona Isakova. See: https://www.trystgallery.com/ or contact info@trystgallery.com. For information on the art auction see LoudounCares.org.

Marthe McGrath: Abstract Painter

“I don’t paint by a lot of rules,” says artist Marthe McGrath; “In fact, I’ve been called fearless.” That she mentions rules at all probably harkens to her childhood when her grandfather was the curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She took art classes at the Corcoran and enjoyed painting at an early age, but then only took it up as a profession in retirement.

She paints large, expressive works in bright colors with “an intuitive and joyful process.... Quiet things just aren’t my passion.” Her inspirations are drawn from her travel to many exotic places like India, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Marrakesh and Havana, all of which she calls very colorful places. A trip to Venice last year had her painting on loose canvas in a 15th Century piazza – which a trained eye might spot in one of the paintings depicted below. Rather than being representational, her Vivid Venice Series is meant to evoke the lifeblood of the ancient city on the sea.

Rock and roll is admittedly another key influence in her work, though Magic and Loss, the title of a Lou Reed album, is really just meant to evoke a feeling. Locals may recognize it from a series she showed in Leesburg recently called “Rhythm and Hues.”

“For me," she said, "painting is transformative. It mesmerizes me, creating an energy I like to think shows in my work.”

See her website at http://www.m2artist, or call for an appointment at the http://www.restonartgallery.com ​at 11400 Washington Plaza West in Reston.

Richard Busch: Photographer, Potter, Publisher

Sometimes life hands you a break. After working with Life Magazine for nearly five years, Richard Busch decided it was time to hang out his own shingle as a photojournalist, then hopped into a car and headed to Woodstock. A little more than 50 years later, he has compiled his photos into a book called Woodstock Nation.

While editor of National Geographic’s Traveler magazine, he took a pottery class and found he loved ceramics so much that he just might want to craft pottery for a living after he retired. Glenfiddich Farm Pottery was born in his basement studio in 1998.

Now, after attaining mastery in ceramics, he finds himself returning to his “first love,” photography.

“I’ve been looking back on my work over the last 50 years and am finding pictures that have a coherence in theme and putting them together in books,” Richard says. What for him constitutes a great way of organization has been rewarded by six of his seven books being selected for the library of the Museum of Modern Art and 19 of his Manhattan prints being chosen by the Museum of the City of New York.

His current project, ripe for these times of living in a land of masked strangers is called Ambiguity. Each photo poses a question: “It’s the mystery, the uncertainty, the puzzle, the ambiguity” that draws you in and won’t let you go. "There are no answers so the viewer can only speculate,” Richard says..

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