Julie Smith’s bold landscapes and florals invite us to travel to places beyond the everyday. Her aerial paintings take us sky high, and her detailed investigations of plants require us to lean in. Through the work she invites us to contemplate the structures that make up our world. Her use of color and investigation of form results in complex compositions that are both delightful and mysterious. Of this body of work, Smith reflects, “Wherever I walk in P’town I see amazing flowers and landscapes. Trying to discern complex color relationships and shapes to make a painting has been gratifying beyond words.” 

Julie Smith was born and raised in Texas. After receiving a BFA from the University of Texas, she moved to Aspen, CO where she attended the Center of the Eye School of Photography. After five years, she relocated permanently to the East Coast. In 1993, she received her MFA with Honors in Painting and Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. Smith has exhibited and lectured widely in the New England area. She has taught in the Continuing Education Department at Rhode Island School of Design, School One in Providence and St. George’s School in Middletown, RI, as well as Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride, CO. In 2000, Smith was awarded Best In Show by the Newport Art Museum for the Member’s Juried Exhibition. Smith resides in Provincetown in the summer and Newport, RI in the off season.

Four Eleven Gallery is proud to announce Leaving Broken Hearts Behind: New Paintings by Pete Hocking. Continuing Hocking’s exploration of emotion and visual perception in the Cape Cod landscape, Leaving Broken Hearts Behind is about transcending inconsequential grievance and embracing awe. Of his motivation, Hocking says, “Too many of my days are spent mucking around in conflicts that simply won’t matter in a month or a year. And while I burn energy in spiraling thoughts, a glorious world spins past. I don’t want to be blinded by things over which I have no control. I want to live in radical amazement of what’s before me. I want my paintings to be instigated by joy.” 

These paintings exemplify Hocking’s rich use of paint. Whether through delicate marks or bold fields of color, there’s a physicality to the work and a sense of presence. While it’s easy to categorize Hocking as a landscape painter, it’s probably more accurate to say he’s a painter of feeling or fleeting experience.  

We're proud to announce Make It Easy on Yourself: New Work by Naya Bricher. The show opens August 20th, and runs through August 26th. The gallery will hold a cautious, sidewalk reception from 7 PM - 9 PM on Friday, August 20th. Of her new work, Bricher says, “This summer, I've been repeating the phrase: ‘make it easy on yourself’ when I start to spiral into elaborate, energy-zapping schemes, either in or out of the studio. This mantra, of sorts, reminds me that I can, we all can, pick the easier option, the choice with less resistance. Without overthinking the imagery, the paintings are composed intuitively and infused with ease, delight and curiosity. There are cute animals, hot dog stands, ice cream cones, towel creatures and napkin art scattered throughout this new body of work.

Four Eleven Gallery announces Portrait/Self-Portrait. This group show coincides with Provincetown’s traditional Carnival Week, and is curated in the spirit of revelry and revelation. It opens Friday, July 13the and runs through August 19th.

Every portrait reflects three people: the subject, the artist and the viewer. This show explores the dialogue between these reflections by offering a broad range of approaches to representing human experience through painting. Artists include Four Eleven Gallery regulars Naya Bricher, Liz Carney, Janine Evers, David Foley, Mary Giammarino, Helen Grimm, Pete Hocking, Paul Rizzo and Julie Smith. We’re also delighted to include works by guest artists Cary Bryant, Ella Grimm, Amy Kandall, and Andy Towle.

Liz Carney, the show’s curator, says of the work, “Portraiture and self portraiture are fitting genres in this time of extraordinary uncertainty and flux in our culture. We are in transition out of solitude. For this show we’ve asked gallery artists and guest artists to reveal themselves - representationally, symbolically, abstractly. We show ourselves, unmasked, facing the mirror and the viewer.” 

Four Eleven Gallery is proud to present Tilting the Axis: New Paintings by Mary Giammarino. This is Giammarino’s third summer show with the gallery. It opens Friday, July 30th and runs through August 12th. A reception with the artist will be held from 7 PM - 9 PM on Friday, July 30th.

Giammarino’s process is committed to a rigorous examination of the Outer Cape landscape. Her paintings examine what’s seen in the landscape, but also what’s intuited and felt in the body. As a result, her paintings have a profound sense of presence. In relation to this body of new work, Giammarino says, “What’s before me is the same as what was. I am drawn to the way it looked yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The world breaks open when you find the infinity in sameness.”

Giammarino’s devotion to light and color is evident in all of her paintings, reflecting her passion and devotion to capturing the exquisite drama of nature’s fleeting moods. Grounded in an Impressionist palette and technique of placing one color next to another, her work is less idealized than traditional Impressionism and contemporary by design. While Giammarino makes her home in Vermont, she’s returned to Provincetown to paint, study, and teach every summer since 1989.

Stairs a Witch Can't Climb is a body of abstract work that meditates on the ideas of obstruction and preventative measure. Some New England houses were built with extremely unorthodox staircases that grew into legend as "Witches Stairs". The myth is that this structural design was thought to prevent a witch from climbing a staircase. 

While the thought of architectural intervention on supernatural or superstitious beliefs can be endearing and esthetically charming, these staircases become less of a utilitarian structure and more of a metaphor for personal barriers and / or consequent stepping stones. The thought of an eccentric, New England practice centered on spatial frugality, compared to an irrational, fearful compulsion, can help us look inward at our own fear of the unknown, real or imagined.

Matthew Bielen’s paintings are influenced by his love of the ocean, and the play between organic forms, and human’s ability to sculpt them. Growing up, his family would go to the beach on Cape Cod, where the New England beach weather was far more tempestuous than other places. His paintings are influenced by these atmospheric wanderings along the shoreline. Lighthouses, fog, swirling water, are all images conceptually implied in his paintings. 

I Did It All With Adoration presents Hocking’s current exploration of the Outer Cape’s Atlantic coast. From the magnificent views of oceanside roads in Wellfleet and Eastham, to the undulating cliffs of Truro and desert-like plains of Provincetown, this work presents the majesty and precarity of the shifting edge of Cape Cod.