New Romantic Landscapes at Standard Space’s Anniversary Show

Standard Space marks its first anniversary with the new show, Jeff Joyce: “The Nineteenth Century and After.” A nod to the Yeats poem, and an homage to the nature cult of the Romantic Movement, the exhibit features Joyce’s oil landscapes some of local scenes, some from Nantucket.    

The gallery is a welcome and energizing addition to Sharon, as well as to the broader local art scene. It is fitting that the anniversary show, which crowns an excellent first year, features a survey of work by Joyce, a Sharon-based artist. His spare landscapes feel contemporary but acknowledge the long tradition of painting in which he works. Joyce entices us with his painting here with distant, gathering clouds, light filled blue skies and meandering creeks, which pull one in, as with two large works “Tidal Creek,” and the aptly named “Hither Creek.” Perhaps no painting does this better than “Passage West,” which draws the eye to a waterway that appears to widen and narrow at once. The piece has a quiet beauty, and offers a view of nature that feels so unspoiled it’s as if it might have been done by a member of Lewis & Clark’s westward party. Such is the power of landscape that Joyce is able to harness and play with here.

Scenes from the local environment appear in ways both familiar and unexpected. The vertical landscape of “Sharon” is more clouds than earth and so heavily textured—the canvas is dense with brushstrokes—that the work is imparted with a tangible intensity. The dusky vista of “Taconic” gives Joyce the room to consider light and shadow, which he does with a gorgeous delicacy. Light moves in pale strips of pink and blue, while a crescent moon offers itself in only the faintest of terms. Deeply influenced by the Romantic Movement, the painter deftly manages to nod to these influences, yet avoids sentimentality in favor of something far more mercurial and compelling. 

“The Nineteenth Century and After” runs through Sept. 30 at Standard Space, 147 Main Street, Sharon. The gallery is open Friday to Sunday from 12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. or by appointment. For further information, (917) 627-3261 or www.standardspace.net.