Hearne Pardee's New Exhibition at Bowery Gallery Merges Plein Air with Collage Techniques

Hearne Pardee opens a solo exhibition titled 'Visual Resources' at New York's Bowery Gallery on November 28, 2012, running through December 22. The show presents new work developed during his decade-long residence in Davis, California, where he teaches at UC Davis. Pardee's artistic practice combines plein air painting with studio-based collage, applying hand-painted paper shapes to established images in what he calls 'construction with color.' This method connects to his enduring admiration for Paul Cézanne and the pedagogical influence of Josef Albers, whom he encountered as an undergraduate at Yale in the 1960s. His work focuses on urban and suburban landscapes, particularly the tree-lined streets and ranch homes of Davis, which he describes as 'everyday working class landscape.' Pardee seeks to capture the 'psychological neighborhood' of a place, merging direct observation with personal memory and art historical references. Throughout his career, he has identified specific artists associated with each location he has lived—such as Marsden Hartley for Maine and Georgia O'Keeffe for New Mexico—engaging in a dialogue with both place and predecessor. His recent paintings sometimes incorporate scans of personally significant objects or are painted over older works, creating an amalgam of past and present. The exhibition is located at 530 West 25th Street, Suite #404, in New York City.