This Saturday, July 23, from 6 to 8 pm, celebrate the female form at the new exhibit in Hostetler Gallery at 42 Centre Street entitled Feminine Mystique. Featuring paintings by Donna Isham, photography by Alyssa Fortin, and David Hostetler’s sculptures of the female form, the event promises to inspire discussion and appreciation.
Donna Isham’s canvases are bold and honest, figurative and abstract. Seeing the female from from a woman’s point of view is evocative and emotional. As she stated in a recent interview: “I have always found that the female form is beautiful and a display of natural perfection…my work combines the concept of deconstruction both figuratively and emotionally and reconstruction in time where viewpoints of beauty…where evaluations of perfection have taken a new turn.”
Known for her portraits and her travel shots, photographer Alyssa Fortin’s fine art photography is also stunning. For this Feminine Mystique show at Hostetler Gallery, her images celebrate the female form defying gravity in photographs of ballet dancers submerged. Fortin’s subjects exude strength; her images flowing and filled with light.
Internationally known and collected for his exquisite sculture, David Hostetler, who passed in 2015, once said “Woman to me is the ideal form, erotic yet pure, compositionary variable, yet identical every time.” His wife and muse Susan Hostetler, who runs the gallery, said of the three artists’ work included in Feminine Mystique “we all play well together…it’s all about the female form.”
In addition to this new exhibition, art from the show Influence, which opened last week in the Hostetler Gallery, will continue to grace the walls through the summer season. This show is an innovative collaboration between Susan Hostetler and New York Gallerist Debbie Dickinson, and includes fantastical abstracts of nature with brilliant color by Kristy Gordon, stunning paintings by internationally known polymath American artist Curtis Wallin, and serene and luminous work by Bryan LeBoeuf, who is widely collected.
Susan Hostetler encourages all to visit and view the art: “The more you see, the more you develop your own curated eye,” she commented. “Art can bring beauty and happiness… it can test you. You will find what fits.”
Hostetler Gallery is open daily at 42 Centre Street Nantucket
and online at HostetlerGallery.com and @hostetler_gallery