Arts & Entertainment

"New Works by Derek Anstis and Terre Rybovich"

By Marya Summers 

Showing us where they've been and how they got there, the pieces in "New Works by Derek Anstis and Terre Rybovich" are each a sort of map. Anstis' paintings are based on a cartographic landscape model. His colorful grids warp with the topography of the landscapes so that geometric patterns become fluid and organic. The process, while achieved in acrylic, is inspired by nature, something the artist first observed from an airplane window. "The surface of the Earth looks, from a great altitude, like a liquid. A mountain may spill for ten thousand years into a valley," Anstis says. The textures and patterns are achieved much like nature itself — using gravity's effects on the paints' differing viscosities, which produce distorted grids as the wet paint runs and creates fissures and ridges among the colors as they dry. Where Anstis' paintings are deliberate, Rybovich's charcoal drawings are inspired by chance. Hers are abstract maps of the path of subconscious. Covering each paper first with charcoal, she rubs them with her hands and marks them or erases them as she is intuitively moved to do. Sometimes, images emerge to create a narrative; other times, shapes and lines just ask to be appreciated for composition's sake. Some drawings look primitive, others futuristic. The two artists' works are striking complements. Rybovich's loose charcoals find their structure in their uniform size and identical white frames while Anstis' intentional acrylics demonstrate their looseness, spilling over their unframed sides. Further unifying the exhibit, curator Sam Perry presents the charcoal drawings in a grid of two tidy rows of ten and arranges the topographic paintings by their differing sizes and subjects. (Through February 16 at My Coffeehouse Gallery, 2036 N. Dixie Hwy., West Palm Beach. Call 561-853-5748.)