1053 Gallery is pleased to present, TERRAPHILIA, a two-person painting show with new works by Upstate, NY-based artists, Lisa Lebofsky and Christie Scheele, opening on Saturday,September 13, from 4-7PM. The exhibition, curated by Lindsay Comstock and Monte Wilson, and on view through October 19, features two visionary perspectives on a common theme: thelandscape.

Terraphilia is the eternal love for the earth and the sublime that can be directly experienced through our corporal, cerebral and imaginative connection with the natural world. Both Lebofsky’s and Scheele’s love for nature is illuminated through their careful reinterpretations of the landscapes in which they immerse themselves. From the Catskill mountains to Scotland’s vast green expanses to the Labrador Sea, this exhibition offers glimpses at the swaths of earth that still remain wild and free.

The exhibition of paintings shows the versatility inherent in the processes and techniques of both artists, who paint scenes of the natural landscape while simultaneously drawing upon memory and interiority. While Lebofsky is a nomadic plein art painter, who sometimes usesmaterials from the earth as her paintbrush, Scheele paints from images and memory, reconstructing scenes, sometimes collaging with foraged materials.

Lebofsky works with her direct experience to bring a sense of place into her work, allowing the viewer to feel the energy of the environment and the power of the elements. Incorporating herbackground as a metalsmith, she often paints on metal panel to bring in reflected light to thepicture plane, which has the effect of obliterating the scene from certain angles. This carries an echo of the instability of the earth. Many of her works hold the subtle tension of disaster: a controlled burn gone wrong; the detritus of a hurricane; a lifeless body draped upon the land. She personifies objects of the natural world, which bring a dynamic quality to the otherwise sublime scenes.

Scheele’s work transforms the landscapes that many of us are familiar with in the Catskills and softens them into their natural state, as if asking the viewer to see what lies beneath and connects all of the individual beings within the landscapes. Her work holds two intentions at once: the depiction of a single moment in nature and the creation of a unified visual experience through the abstract elements within the works, similar to the color field painters from which she derives inspiration. The selection includes recent collages set on vintage blackboards inspired by an artist residency in Scotland.