Bette Cerf Hill - Fine Art

THE SECRET GARDEN

Paintings by Thomas Masters & Bette Cerf Hill

Opening reception with both artists present,
Saturday, October 20 from 5 PM - 9PM.

The show runs Saturday, October 20 - Sunday,
November 18.

Hours are Thursday through Sunday 12 - 5PM
1821 West Hubbard St, Suite 210, Chicago, Il 60622

Or by appointment call: 312 622 3003,
e-mail: cerfhill@aol.com
Free parking in front of the building on opening
night and on weekends. Street parking on week days.

Bette Cerf Hill and Thomas Masters will curate each others work for a special exhibition themed on The Secret Garden. The two painters who usually exhibit other artists in their respective galleries, will show their own paintings in this first collaboration at Hill's new gallery in the Near West side.

Masters will show abstracted luminous landscape that relate to formal Japanese gardens. Working in oil, Masters exhibition will include several works that were recently shown in The Hammond Museum in New York as well as new work created for this showing.

Hill has created a series of mixed-media, hand-colored images taken from a single delicate drawing of her summer garden. She enlarged, manipulated and multiplied and then hand colored the reproductions of the drawing to create a series of small works on paper which will fill half of the exhibition space. This grouping represents a shifting sense of scale and a contrast to the large paintings on canvas which depict complicated and dense hidden gardens that stimulate the viewers imagination about what is happening just behind the scrim of trees and verdant growth.

Hill said she was "drawn to Masters abstracted garden landscapes which imply large and serene spaces." She said "Masters gardens are places you want to keep seeing and because the viewer fills in the with his imagination the places seem almost familiar but better then we remember them." "Color," she goes
on "is always important to me and Masters uses just enough and manages to give the paintings a luminous quality that again evokes memory."

Masters is intrigued by the way Hill's new work on paper dissects the flower drawing into distinct segments which lets the viewer have an up-close look while shadows distract and evoke the mysterious nature of the garden that is always present.

Masters, an accomplished musician and Hill, a poet, will enhance the visual presentations with words and music. Events will be scheduled.

The exhibition which is free and open to the public begins on October 20 with both artists present and runs through Sunday, November 18, 2007
Previews of the work and interviews are available to the press.