Roseanne Backstedt's New Paintings

New York - Artist Roseane Backstedt of New York City and Sparrowbush will open a new show of her work in Manhattan on Feb.28 at the Ceres Gallery. “Roseanne Backstedt’s landscape elements are deployed to challenge the mind and the eye. The underlying abstractions fascinate. Her landscapes, her places, are deeply felt. The landscapes resonate with memory, even though the actual scenes jostle and contrast with formal abstract elements that the artist deploys as framing devices. One detects a love of opposites everywhere. In a sense, her work is a great tapestry of opposites: inside and out, near and far, mind and soul woven together to create an approximation of the warp and woof of closely examined experience. Backstedt’s visions force us to open ourselves to the most profound mysteries of experience, to re-conceptualize the world as we think we know it. Her art opens doors onto realms rarely glimpsed,” wrote art critic David Cleveland. Backstedt often paints the Delaware Valley. “I have painted scenes from the tri-state area for many years. This painting, ‘Blossom to Fall on Winter,’ represents the seasons and shows the drama of the beautiful Delaware. The river, depicted in a rectangle, is both separate from and joined to what is around it. People hope to be independent, unique, and yet part of and joined to other things in a wonderful way. The Philosophy of Aesthetic Realism showed me that the opposites that people want to have brought together in their lives are together in art.” The paintings can be viewed from Feb. 28 to March 25 at Ceres Gallery 547 West 27th St., 2nd Floor, New York, N.Y. 10001 212- 947-6100. A reception for the artist will be held Thursday, March 9, from 6 to 8:00 p.m.