It has become a truism of our technology-centric age that photographs are more telling, more evocative, more "real" than their antecedents, paintings.
But Drew Galloway's paintings at Marcia Wood Gallery in Castleberry Hill are an argument for the persuasive power of painting. Galloway's solo show "Light and Shadows" focuses on the natural world and features the dappled light, umbrella of leaves and strong stalks of trees reflected in a river. His perspective is often a view of the water's surface.
The nine works illustrate a painter's ability to convey information sometimes more thoroughly than the more scientific record of photographs. Galloway's shimmering paintings in oil on metal convey a powerful sense of warmth and chilliness, of movement and calm, the flow of water, the sensations of contemplating a mountain stream or resting in a tree's deep shadows.
In "Drifting" a leaf in the painting's upper right corner floats on a river. The water's surface is a tapestry of suggestive movement. There are trees and sunlight reflected on the water, and then below are the varied stones at the river's bottom. In his paintings — primarily of the way light and landscape are reflected on the water — Galloway skillfully conveys the kaleidoscopic layers and colors the eye would absorb on a walk in the woods.
But rather than some perfectly framed natural vignette, Galloway focuses on the sensations of nature. Instead of a postcard shot of the Grand Canyon or an Ansel Adams image of the West, Galloway offers what the Impressionists also sought: the power of light, the sense of time's passage and the sensation of movement conveyed in the alchemy of paint and brushwork.
"Morning Light" is a particularly beautiful example of his modus operandi. An assembly of tall trees is mirrored in blue water. And at the top of the painting, drawing your eye in, is a molten halo of sun bouncing with explosive energy off of the water.
Like the stained glass windows they can occasionally resemble, the paintings are studies in how light changes, casting shadows or dancing off of surfaces depending on the season or the landscape.
Instead of the vistas that have so captivated legions of landscape painters before him, Galloway most often portrays how landscape is transformed via the water, offering an oddly distanced, second-hand perspective.
The paintings are lovely, if a little thematically circular, and can sometimes feel emotionally inert once you get beyond Galloway's operating fixation on light and his ability to render it so skillfully. He creates atmospheric paintings that capture the dynamism and sensations of the natural world.
If you don't have immediate access to the great outdoors, or just want to hang one of his paintings in place of a window, his works-with-a-view may offer just the approximation of nature and its effects you crave.
The Bottom Line: Studies of light and movement in the natural world that will delight some for their technical proficiency and reverence for nature.
Art Review
"Drew Galloway: Light and Shadows"
Through July 28. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Free. Marcia Wood Gallery, 263 Walker Street, Atlanta. 404.827.0030, www.marciawoodgallery.com.
