MondayMorningPaintings

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Marilyn Beig +Lourdes O’Leary

Monday Morning Paintings

Marilyn Beig +Lourdes O’Leary

Curated byAlex Priest

Omaha Public Library /Michael Phipps Gallery

Dec 02 - Dec 31, 2013

For nearly 25 years, artists in the Monday Morning Group have been gathering to paint and draw live models in an ongoing attempt to capture the unique subtleties and nuances of the human figure. Marilyn Beig joined the Monday Morning Group six years ago, and Lourdes O’Leary fifteen. While the models change weekly and range from friends, family, and sometimes strangers, the passion, conviction and artistic dialogue Beig and O’Leary bring to their work has remained constant. Although the two always work from the same live model, their choice of medium combined with their drawing and painting perspectives provide a unique look into their combined artistic persona. The intricacy of gesture and manipulation of ephemera characterizes two very different artists, however, the perplexing aesthetic similarities of non-similar models reveal the honed language of a true collaboration. Monday Morning Paintings seeks to articulate this visual and personal alliance through an assemblage of Beig’s and O’Leary’s paintings and drawings of similar and dissimilar models.

_Monday Morning PaintingsAlex Priest

As members of the Monday Morning Group, both take the disciplined weekly meeting as an opportunity to share and learn from the other artists struggling to make marks on paper that have meaning to others as well as themselves. The two confirm the constant challenge and responsibility of working with live models as a way to show the variegated personalities, body language, expression and mystery of each individual model. Whether it is through watercolor or pastel, Monday Morning Paintings depicts a dedication to the sensuality of individualism, and both artists agree that Monday Morning Group is “a most profitable and interesting way to spend a few hours on Mondays.”

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There’s a rather hidden group of artists in Omaha quietly pursuing the goal of advancing their artistic ability. They faithfully go to weekly drawing sessions to start portrait work to be finished in their home studios. They attend workshops and art-making camps, building on traditional college art classes from the past. And they occasionally show their work at local venues. Such is the case with Marilyn Beig and Lourdes O’Leary’s December, 2013 exhibit at W. Dale Clark Library’s Michael Phipps Gallery.

Both of these artists have drawn the figure, as well as landscapes, for many years, establishing a recognizable personal style in the process. This exhibit consists of a large array of portraits from the Monday sessions with models. Often, there are drawings of the same model by each artist, which makes a fascinating comparison for the observer.

Ms. Beig’s medium tends to be watercolor, while Ms. O’Leary’s are usually pastel drawings. When they have good luck, these artists may choose to build on the work started during the session to more

_Direct Observations Eddith Buis

of a completion, or Gestalt later. But the advantage of having a live model adds to the possibility for success. There is much to be said for drawing from life, as artists have long done, to achieve a feeling of freshness possible only with direct observation.

Both artists are refining their observational abilities in the act of practicing weekly. Beyond that, the work frequently seems to add an insight into the personality of the sitter. The viewer, in studying and comparing various approaches within the confines of the depicting of a human, can find pleasure in the honest, often direct renderings. They lack the artifice and overwrought contemporary slickness of so much of art shown today, that tends to obfuscate the simple, direct observation we see in this exhibit.

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