Longyear Hosts Halpern and Kyles Art Shows

MARGARETVILLE — Last Saturday, September 13, the Longyear Gallery in Margaretville hosted two solo art shows: Robin S. Halpern’s “Reigning Color” and Hedi Kyle’s “Motten." 

“Reigning Color” is a selection of abstract works: mixed media on canvas. Complex and layered, the work is at once dream-like and bold, using ink, paint, graphite and a range of papers, including scraps of foreign newspapers the artist has collected on her travels. Her work, she says, “explores the dynamic interplay of color, shape and form. My abstract and expressionist figurative paintings are born through this fusion of materials and techniques - works that evoke mood, memory and sensation."

Robin started working on art when she was about sixteen years old, “doodling, drawing and portraits”, then went to art school and got her degree from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse, where she studied under noted figurative painter Jerome Witkin, and George McNeil, the founder of The American Abstract Artists. “Then, I needed to make a living”, she says. “So I went to graduate school and that led me to become a psychotherapist, which is what I still do. So I didn’t work with my art for over 30 years, then I picked it up again about 15-20 years ago."

Coincidentally, Hedi Kyle’s work “Motten”, meaning moths, consists of stenciled moths that are reminiscent of cyanotypes, plus sculpted moths in paper and other materials. The stenciled moths are layered on top of one another and the effect is that they look like Rorschach tests, continuing this theme for the weekend from this writer. How does art affect us when we contemplate it? How does it make us think?

When asked, Robin says it was a fluke that the two artists are showing together despite the obvious connection and goes on to state: “the same intuitive and imaginative energy that animates my therapeutic practice also inspires my approach to the canvas. Viewers are invited to engage with the work, not just visually, but emotionally - attuning to the subtle ways in which color, texture, and form may stir inner responses." 

Robin says her therapy practice and her art practice inform one another, in terms of being intuitive and creative.

Hedi Kyle’s work is called “Motten” instead of moths, because, being German, the correct sound of “th” does not come easy to her. “Since I wanted to feel comfortable when pronouncing the title of my show, I chose “Motten." Real moths have always intrigued Hedi, who says she “finds them secretly beautiful and haunting, being attracted to light when it is safer in the dark. Moths have appeared off and on in my work for 50 years."

Born in Berlin in 1937, Hedi graduated from the Werk-Kunst-Schule in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1959 with a degree in graphic design and after a year spent painting in Greece, she was subsequently employed as a commercial artist in Frankfurt. After moving to the US, she took a job at the New York Botanical Garden where she was offered training with conservator and master binder Laura S. Young. She began teaching book arts workshops at the Center for Book Arts in Lower Manhattan. “Folding, crumbling and shaping paper has fascinated me throughout my career as a book conservator and book artist. The pages of an open book remind me of creatures with wings."

Robin S. Halpern’s “Reigning Color” and Hedi Kyle’s “Motten” will be on show at the Longyear Gallery until October 13, 2025. The Longyear Gallery is located downstairs at the Commons Building, 785 Main Street, Margaretville, NY. Gallery opening hours are 12pm to 5pm Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. www.longyeargallery.org info@longyeargallery.org or 845-586-3270.