Essay by Kathleen Moody

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>BARRY</B></div> <div> <B>MASTELLER</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="paintings.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Paintings"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">PAINTINGS</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="artist_statement.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Artist Statement"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ARTIST STATEMENT</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="biography___upcoming_exhibitions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Biography / Upcoming Exhibitions"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">BIOGRAPHY / UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_donald_kuspit.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ESSAY BY DONALD KUSPIT"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY DONALD KUSPIT</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_dominique_nahas.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Essay by Dominique Nahas"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY DOMINIQUE NAHAS</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY KATHLEEN MOODY</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="essay_by_marcelle_polednik.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Essay By Marcelle Polednik"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ESSAY BY MARCELLE POLEDNIK</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="artworks_magazine_article.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ArtWorks Magazine Article"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ArtWorks MAGAZINE ARTICLE 2008</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="archives.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Archives"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">ARCHIVES</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="biography___upcoming_exhibitions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Biography / Upcoming Exhibitions"><B><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Wing0a73007700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">CONTACT</B></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" width="100%" BGCOLOR="#777777" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Essay by Kathleen Moodie</B></div> <bR> <div> The serenity of a well-measured and contemplative space is a reward in itself and time spent there is a gift. Barry Masteller's studio is just such a space, built on the side of a hill set into a stand of California oak trees. It is no wonder his paintings reflect the serenity that is so important in his process. "I paint in my studio at night under very controlled lighting. I integrate the things that I have seen and the way in which the landscape and light affect me. For me, both land and light are deeply personal and spiritual." His muted palette, acute visual memory, and deep commitment to flawless surfaces provide a temporary respite from our anxious times.  Uneasiness, fear, distrust - these are our modern ailments. The paintings are a beneficent blend of soothing agent and inexplicable longing- stately meditations on fragility.</div> <bR> <div> "No place is a place until it has had a poet," wrote Wallace Stegner. Masteller does not, however, wish to give a particular place importance. His beautifully rendered yet generalized landforms move us from the specific to the universal. Feathered trees, loamy fields, and tranquil waterways are nowhere and everywhere - quietly dissolving in the dimming light at close of day. They live in our experience and reside in our memory. This is Masteller's genius. He can provide the promise of the next moment as we might imagine it.  His vision is in concert with our needs.</div> <bR> <div> Cézanne, too, had this generosity in his work, his extreme concentration brought to bear on his own environment -Aix-en-Provence and the surrounding countryside. His loosely abstracted depictions allow us as viewers to add our own sensibilities and dispositions.  Cézanne, very specifically, and Masteller, with a more generalized aesthetic, hold one notion in common- the enduring belief that landscape is infinitely rewarding of observation.</div> <bR> <div> Masteller's fealty is first to the traditional genre. He is a worthy heir to a revered lineage of California artists who used the Monterey Peninsula and its environs as muse. His canvases reveal vestiges of this heritage in the dark fore-grounded shapes and softly lit backdrops, assuring us that this rich history has not reached a conclusion.  William Keith, Xavier Martinez, Arthur Mathews, Eugen Neuhaus, Charles Rollo Peters, Gottardo Piazonni, and Will Sparks were among the early founders of the historic Art Gallery in Monterey's Del Monte Hotel, instituted after San Francisco's tragic earthquake and fire of 1906. The gallery provided a positive and symbiotic relationship between the artists and the Monterey and Carmel area. The painters settled into their studios, Piazonni eventually buying a ranch in Carmel Valley, and their translucent romantic paintings established the beginnings of a now famous art colony. These artists, known as California Tonalists, were drafting their own version of the Barbizon school of landscape painting as practiced in Europe and on the East Coast at the turn of the past century. It was a picturesque setting, and the artists' use of atmospheric fogs and somber moods formed an iconography that continues today. </div> <bR> <div> What those artists in the last century achieved was a visual document of their time. The images were of crumbling ruins, eighteenth -century Spanish buildings, and a countryside that was vast and unspoiled. The paintings appear to us now glazed with nostalgia and poetic imaginings. Yet, Masteller's vision is not a revivification of the past; it is an honoring of the present. The region in which he lives and works, the Monterey Bay, still has pockets of unruffled landscape, but these unspoiled places are not easily woven into our quotidian lives, and Masteller gently urges us to seek them out.</div> <bR> <div> The words the artist uses to describe his aesthetic distinctions are elegant - to cherish and to enchant. He speaks of his "enchantment with the forms and shapes, and the light that they frame;" and of his "cherishing the quality of light that skims the surface of the coastline." As devotedly as an artist and lover might drape his beloved model, Masteller describes how he "hangs color and paint on the landscape." This analogy provides a plausible explanation for the viewer's stance.  Just slightly outside, as if looking at the painted scene through a window, we are kept at a discreet, but comfortable distance. Even so, we can easily bask in their reflected beauty. We come to these paintings to see what can be seen rarely in our everyday lives; we leave with the gift of a restorative balm.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Kathleen Moodie is the Curator of Art at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, California.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>  All text and images contained on this site copyright Barry Masteller 2008</div> <bR> <div>       <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-1184931-1"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>     <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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