Night Shades

daphne:art Gallery and Advisory presents Night Shades in collaboration with ODETTA Gallery. This exhibition by artists Nancy Baker, Geoffrey Parker, and Claire Seidl offers paintings and photographs that elicit memories, address tensions, and suggest alternative realities. Together, the triad conveys aspects of our dystopia.

Nancy Baker's acrylic on wood panel paintings were selected from a series she made in 2021. Each imparts a surreal atmosphere with abstracted forms in nonspecific landscapes. Though not immediately apparent, the floating, geometric imagery refers to the barrels and bullets of guns. Baker's anti-gun message is rendered universal by the anonymity of her ethereal spaces, conveying the cool and inhuman purpose of the weapons.

Claire Seidl has been an abstract painter for forty years and a photographer for twenty. In both her painting and photography, she explores the same formal concerns, creating work that challenges our perception of the often thin line between reality and abstracted memory. Her photographs hold multiple layers of space and reflections in focus while we can only perceive one at a time. They are not manipulated in the darkroom; rather, Seidl's photographs are taken at night when our ability to see clearly is limited but the open gaze of the camera dispassionately records everything.

Geoffrey Parker began making art as a child, watching his father Robert Andrew Parker — the renowned painter and illustrator — churn out work for The New Yorker and Fortune magazine. For many years Geoff was a freelance artist for The London Times and The New Yorker. He also spent time as a merchant marine stationed in the Baltic Sea, painting oil rig platforms, buoys, and lighthouses illuminated by single lights in the ominous cold waters.

daphne:art Gallery and Advisory was founded in 2024 by veteran art museum curator Daphne Anderson Deeds. Located in her Litchfield Connecticut home, the gallery presents art in all media by artists from throughout the US in a relaxed, domestic setting.

Exhibition Details