Marla Brenner, Terri Beck-Engel

media release: As the near total demise of the commercial art gallery scene descends on the Madison area the best of local painters are moving their exhibition venues to local cafes and restaurants, much like 19th century artists did before them. Two artists producing beautiful and complimentary work are now showing at the Firefly Cafe in Oregon, Wisconsin. Marla Brenner, a bold and bravura filled painter of landscape, wildlife and still life, is paired with Terri Beck-Engel, who is showing small exquisite abstractions that combine painterly passages of striking color with direct calligraphic mark making. On exhibit through April 30, Firefliy is open from 6 am-4 pm daily.

Brenner, who has been on the Madison art and design scene for almost 48 years now, demonstrates her deceptively graceful draftsmanship coupled with a true elan of bold, decisive, and sweeping brushwork which elegantly describes her subjects with economy and painterly energy. Of particular note are a series of small gouache paintings that have an effervescent liveliness that speaks to the urgency of her subjects.

Beck-Engel is in the business of manufacturing jewels in the guise of small abstract moments. There is a lithe, confident, and almost secretive allusion to pictorial subject that is referenced but never explicitly revealed in her small square offerings. Whispers of DeKooning, Hoffmann, and perhaps Joan Mitchell inform her sensibility with a playfulness and authority not often seen in contemporary abstraction.

This is a show worth traveling to. In an intimate and informal setting without pretension or the sometimes intimidating environment of a formal gallery setting, these are works of great beauty shown in a context that celebrates the immediacy of the aesthetic need that is so prevalent in our artistic desert.