Featuring work by three local artists—Ella Yang, Janet Pedersen, and Susan Greenstein—Simply Local showcases plein air paintings depicting vibrant scenes plucked straight from diverse and quirky Gowanus and surrounding areas. The exhibit pays tribute to the industrial Brooklyn neighborhood known for its low-rise architecture, historic bridges, bars and breweries, and toxic Superfund-designated canal.
“Gowanus has a lot of sky and space,” Ella Yang said Saturday at the Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse where the exhibit is on view through the end of June. “Gowanus still feels like old, real New York, not developed and gentrified.”
A Manhattan native, Yang worked a corporate job for 12 years before switching to a more creative profession, running a pottery studio in Connecticut. After five years, she decided to shutter the studio in 2001 and pursue her longtime dream of studying art in Italy. She found a three-week course in the idyllic Umbria region where she painted her very first plein air piece. “We did figure drawing every morning and then in the afternoon a different teacher took us all to paint outside…. I was just smitten,” she recalled of her introduction to painting outdoors.
“It was a real challenge coming back from Italy to Brooklyn, I was like, ‘where do I paint?’” She initially tried finding “pretty views” similar to those she painted in Italy. “I was like, ‘okay, that’s not going to happen here.’ I started walking around and then there was the Gowanus Canal.” Yang was drawn to the neighborhood’s notoriously polluted body of water, the views of the sky, the “weird architecture,” and the array of discarded objects dotting the shoreline.
Yang immediately found a creative community in Gowanus, joining in the Arts Gowanus Open Studios during its early years. “There were maybe 15 to 20 artists doing it,” she recalled. “It was great. I had so much fun that I volunteered right away to be on the steering committee.” The supportive community and positive feedback she received when showing her work encouraged her to continue painting. The self-taught artist who has worked in Gowanus for 20 years recently moved to a new studio at 543 Union Street.
She never has to travel far for inspiration, often finding subjects in Gowanus or neighboring Park Slope. “I don’t want to go that far because there is always something nearby,” Yang insists. “If you look at my paintings, I don’t paint anything modern or glassy or steel. I’m really attracted to old material that’s not overly designed.”
“I think about light and shadow, in the way it creates shapes and forms,” she continued. In 8th Street she captures the radiant golden hour at a local vacant lot. “It’s one of those places where if you’re there at the right moment, it just lights up and it was—I would say—gorgeous, but maybe a lot of people wouldn’t.”
Artist Janet Pedersen also loves “chasing the light,” according to her website. “This is what I’m always searching for, the light in my work,” she explained. “It’s not like I need amazing architecture or anything. I truly work from looking at angles of light and making a connection that way with my setting. I could be painting anything as boring as…the BQE,” she said, referring to her painting of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. “It had a really nice 'corner light.' I’m looking for corners a lot.” Pedersen’s work often features street corners housing bodegas, laundromats, and other storefronts.
The shorter architecture in Pedersen’s South Slope neighborhood, as well as in Red Hook, often provides ideal lighting for her work. In Gowanus she is fascinated by the canal that divides the neighborhood, as well as the dredging that is currently happening to remove the “black mayo” from the bottom of the waterway. “There’s the colorful elements of these boats that are just waiting to be painted,” she mused. “I respond a lot to color and light.”
She described a northward-facing scene on the canal that she was eager to paint. “The backdrop of downtown, with the boats and the water and a great skyline in the back…. It’s going to be gone soon,” she said, noting the impending Gowanus rezoning. “A lot of things that I’m drawn to are things that are old and probably not going to be around for too much longer, so capturing that on a canvas makes it all the more precious…. This will all change. It will be built up and there goes the light.”
Pedersen hopes visitors to the exhibit will walk away with a sense of hometown pride. “I want people to feel like their neighborhoods were loved a little bit and displayed in an important way because Brooklyn is changing so much, but there’s also a lot that people are trying to preserve too,” noting community organizations such as the Gowanus Dredgers, Arts Gowanus, and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy. “I just hope that people feel good about their neighborhood.”
Susan Greenstein concurs with Pedersen and hopes that visitors to the exhibit will be “excited about this area and have the same excitement for the stories that we all are telling.”
The Windsor Terrace-based artist studied painting and drawing at Pratt and earned her master’s in art education from Queens College. Greenstein has been teaching art at Brooklyn Friends School for 15 years. She has been painting en plein air for more than 30 years. She loves chatting with passersby and curious spectators. “It’s nice to kind of demystify what it is I do and have people ask questions, especially kids. They are so excited about it.”
Greenstein also enjoys the unpredictable nature of her practice. “I love the fact that every single time that I paint all the conditions are different,” she said. “Sometimes it’s super windy, sometimes it’s colder than I would like, or really hot…but I feel like that weaves its way into the work. Even the sounds that I hear, or the way the wind is blowing…I think that’s what’s exciting about the experience. It gets folded into the work.”
When searching for sites to paint, Greenstein seeks out stories that she can visually recreate. “Maybe it’s the way two buildings look next to each other or just how the sky is relating to architecture,” she explained. Along with looking for perfect lighting, Greenstein also searches for patterns. “I’m always very interested in pattern,” she said. “That’s something that always finds its way into my work. It might not be obvious pattern, but there’s something that’s repeating itself in the work.”
In Gowanus Greenstein finds inspiration in the “layers of time that you see all around you,” the combination of older and newer buildings, and industrial structures alongside nature. “Most of the time I love working with plant life and architecture and how they relate to each other,” she said. “And the bridges, I’ve never seen bridges like these, and to see each of them so close to each other, I find that very exciting.”
While Gowanus has its share of notable landmarked buildings, such as the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Central Powerhouse (or the Batcave), the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel Pump House, and the ASPCA Building, none are featured in any of the works displayed in Simply Local. “[The paintings show] simpler structures and there’s a real beauty in that as well,” Greenstein explained. “Things that if you weren’t really looking you might not notice, but they have their own stories.”
From Yang’s precise compositions, Pedersen’s bold color choices, and Greenstein’s pattern-filled vistas, Simply Local masterfully captures the character and brilliance of Gowanus. “That’s the essence of the exhibit,” noted Yang. “We’re not choosing iconic buildings. We’re not choosing something that’s important architecturally…. If you stop and look, there’s beauty everywhere.”
Meet the three artists on Saturday, June 26 (2pm-5pm) at the Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse where they will be on hand for plein air painting demonstrations.
Janet Pedersen and Susan Greenstein also have still life work currently on display at Sweetwaters Café at 55 5th Avenue in Park Slope.
Check out my November 2020 interview with Pedersen where she discussed Step By Step, her 440 Gallery exhibition of dance-inspired paintings.
Simply Local – Painting Gowanus And Beyond
June 1 through 30, 2021
Gowanus Dredger’s Boathouse, 2nd Street (between Bond Street & Gowanus Canal)
Open Saturdays, 1pm to 5pm, or by appointment.
Wonderful review! Beautifully written and IMO so accurate and informative about the
outstanding work of these three fine Brooklyn artists.
Posted by: Leslie Buch | 06/26/2021 at 11:25 AM