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KNOWINGLY NAIVE

The Brooklyn Paper

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The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) launches its 14th annual spring art show at the Red Hook pier on Saturday, offering an opportunity for the public to see the work of over 300 local artists. One of these, Russell Mehlman, is among the borough’s premier primitive artists.

Mehlman’s paintings document everyday life, blending the ordinary with the surreal. His stiff, clumsy figures appear wrapped in ennui, with lifeless limbs. Yet the faces have a dreamlike emotional power. The streets, living rooms and kitchens, in which the figures are posed like dolls, are vibrantly composed.

Mehlman’s scenes are meticulously recorded, yet the artist paints primarily from memory. In "Window Scene" (pictured), a gouache on paper that will be auctioned to benefit the BWAC, Mehlman depicts an anxious-looking cat on a windowsill, and behind it, a colorful street scene. Mehlman himself is the figure in the lower right hand corner, "trying to get the cars to move."

"It’s not really my window," says Mehlman, "but it makes me think of Atlantic Avenue near the Heights."

Nor is the cat Mehlman’s.

"I do a lot of scared cats. That’s how I feel," admits Mehlman. "Now I have no time for cats that look at me. Cats are very needy [I’d be] working on something, and I’d suddenly get the feeling that someone was staring at me. And there were these two cats, just looking at me. So now, I don’t have a cat."

A Mehlman painting depicting two women smoking, "Cigar Bar," will also be shown in the BWAC exhibition.

"The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Pier Art Show 14: Transformations" will be on view Saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm to 7 pm, May 13 through June 18. The show is located at 499 Van Brunt St. at Reed Street in Red Hook. For directions and information visit www.bwac.org or call (718) 596-2507.

- Rebecca Migdal

©2006 Community Newspaper Group

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