New Exhibits at Gallery A3 in May: Sue Curran and GK Khalsa

**Sue Curran, Duality**

Inspired by looking at all kinds of art, people-watching, and physical activity like swimming and

riding a bicycle, guest artist Sue Curran turns to gouache, ink, and watercolor crayons for her mixed

media work on paper. Size and scale are user-friendly, with the artist noting that her favored

dimensions of 11 by 14 inches feel “approachable—not too big and not too small.” Hands-on, not

high-tech, guides her method. As she adds and removes layer upon layer of texture, she creates a

kind of dream landscape in collage. “I return to the image of two women frequently,” Sue says.

“The two figures represent the duality I experience in everyday life: memory and anticipation,

emptiness and abundance, convergence of past and present, and the desire to connect with an

impulse to isolate.”

**GK Khalsa, Smoke and Steam: Locomotive**

With historic black-and-white photographs of trains as source material, GK Khalsa uses the

technique of reverse painting directly on glass to look back in time. “I’m not aiming for photo-

realism,” he explains, “but the spirit of the times and the sense of adventure of traveling by train.”

In some images, locomotives speed across an open landscape; in others, a human figure is tightly

juxtaposed with, and often dwarfed by, powerful, large-scale engines. Because the old photographs

emphasize the drama of light and shadow, GK limits his palette to three colors—white, light gray,

dark gray—and their tonal variations. He often spray-paints the back of the glass—white, black, or

metallic silver—bringing an overall visual unity to the image and evoking late 19th century

photographic glass plates.