Opening reception set April 4 for Color My World exhibit at Peninsula Gallery
The Peninsula Gallery’s April exhibition, Color My World, invites four artists to explore the expressive power of color in art. On display from Saturday, April 4 to Tuesday, May 26, this vibrant showcase brings together scenes with vivid hues, imaginative colors and mind-bending investigations into color theory. The exhibit includes landscapes produced by Jan Crooker, Ann Guidera-Matey, Catherine Martzloff and Pritha Srinivasan.
A free opening reception will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m., Saturday, April 4, at the gallery in the Shops at the Beacon, 520 East Savannah Road, Lewes. All are welcome to join gallery staff and exhibitors for an evening of fine art, and complimentary food and drink. Attendees will have the opportunity to mingle with some of the show’s participating artists.
Jan Crooker is an artist and teacher who has been involved in the visual arts her entire life. She has art degrees from Toledo University and Penn State, and has taught at the Toledo Museum of Art, Penn State, Cal State San Bernardino, Moravian University and Northampton Community College. She has exhibited nationwide and is known for her colorful paintings. She has a studio in Bethany Beach and posts a painting daily on Instagram. Crooker’s style evokes early 1900s modernism, with her pieces featuring elongated horizons, abstracted trees and wispy waterways. Her acrylic palette embraces shades of lavender, ochre and azure.
Ann Guidera-Matey has been working with pastels for about 35 years and has her studio in Aston, Pa. Pastel is her primary medium, selected for its immediacy, saturated hues and ability to capture glowing light. She is inspired by Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the New Jersey coast, the Brandywine Valley and more. Her landscapes evoke the feelings of harmony and balance found in nature. Deep hues, vast environments and visual texture invite observers into Guidera-Matey’s world, where they can pause, take a deep breath and savor the moment. The artist’s pastel works are intensely saturated with fiery blood oranges, strong violets and pinks, and electric teals.
Based in New Jersey, Catherine Martzloff has been painting for over two decades. Her work has evolved in recent years toward bold color relationships and a more distilled visual language. Vintage objects, patterned surfaces and simplified forms often appear in her still lifes, creating compositions that balance structure with intuition. Martzloff’s style is two-dimensional and geometrically focused, giving her pieces an almost cubist aesthetic. The three works she presents in this show are varied in subject: One is a floral portrait, another is a river scene and the last is a still life. Her tones, while still rich, are more muted and unidimensional.
Pritha Srinivasan returns to the Peninsula Gallery after having shown in its March exhibition. She is a Mid-Atlantic, self-taught contemporary artist who has been creating art since childhood. Her award-winning figurative and nature-based watermedia artwork celebrates the wonders within and the fleeting moments people share on life’s collective journey. She uses watercolor and acrylic to convey her unique narrative, deeply influenced by her cultural heritage, travels around the world, literature and an abiding love of nature. By combining dynamic color with detail, her artwork transforms both the mysterious and familiar into something radiant and visionary. Her landscapes blend contrasting shades through sharp brush strokes, making her scenes teeter between realism and impressionism.
