Kate Greenstreet and Rebecca Wolff

November 17, 2007 at 2pm

The Gallery at R&F Handmade Paints
84 Ten Broeck Avenue
Kingston, NY

A $5 donation is suggested.

For directions please visit R&F’s website at http://www.rfpaints.com/

Kate Greenstreet is the author of case sensitive (Ahsahta Press, 2006), and three chapbooks, Learning the Language (Etherdome Press, 2005), Rushes (above/ground press, 2007), and This is why I hurt you (forthcoming from Lame House Press). Her second book, The Last 4 Things, will be out from Ahsahta in 2009. Visit her online at: http://www.kickingwind.com/

Rebecca Wolff is the author of Manderley (University of Illinois Press) and Figment (W.W. Norton), and soon of a novel called The Beginners. She grew up in New York City and has been living in the Hudson Valley since 2005. In 2007 her journal and press, Fence and Fence Books, affiliated with the University at Albany, so that is where she now spends her days.

The Gallery at R&F is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New York artist, Richard Purdy. This mini-retrospective will focus on the artists’ innovative encaustic works from the year 2000 to the present. Richard Purdy: Encaustics 2000-2007 will run from October 6th through November 24th, 2007.

Richard Purdy's paintings employ a mechanism derived from cutting-edge scientific thought. Inspired by the physicist Stephen Woldram’s book, "A New Kind of Science", Purdy’s compositions are generated by a mathematical system called cellular automata - grid-based formations where the identity of each element is determined by its immediate neighbors. In their pure state, the successive boxes of cellular automata are filled by numerical values, and only a mathematician can recognize the complex patterns they reveal—to the rest of us, they appear to be numbers distributed at random. In Purdy’s paintings, however, colors take the place of numbers, making the patterns visible to everyone. And to the surprise even of the artist, the patterns they create are incredibly beautiful in the way that geometric structures often can be, revealing the living implications of advanced scientific thought. Purdy combines the use of computer generated patterning with children’s drawing implements, such as stencils and the spirograph, to yield a range of visual possibilities not available from other media.

Richard Purdy was born in Chicago and attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania (BA in Fine Arts 1978) and the School of Visual Arts (MFA in Computer Arts). He is represented by Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City. For more information about the artist and his work, visit http://www.richardprudy.net/