A New View ARTnews, September 2005: September 1, 2005 The eight artists in this amusing, eclectic summer exhibition used nature as a starting point. None were from the immediate area but, in a way, their work collectively reflected the gallery's location: an idyllic rural retreat for artists and nature lovers. Waddy Armstrong and Robert Flynn stole the show in many respects. Armstrong's colorful, delicate, painted silhouettes of trees and shrubs seem ornamental at first, until a closer reveals hidden, insectlike forms, suggesting an infestation. Flynn's paintings of water spraying through backyard leaves are a tour de force of impressionistic paint handling, but his understated charcoal drawings of grass “plugs” are even more powerful in terms of craftsmanship and mood. He gives each dark tentacled clot of earth and living greenery its own ominous, noirish personality, as if in confronting the plant life he was facing a long-standing nemesis. Similarly moody are the depictions of trees by Michelle Stitz. Applying dark colors between layers of thick, semi-opaque resin, Stitz balances the density and physical presence of tree trunks, bark, and leaves with an ethereal weightlessness more suggestive of memories and dreams. Cynthia Hurley and David Leonard used landscapes as metaphors for broader social commentary, while Tanya Hastings presented complex cut-out silhouettes of trees hanging at a short distance from the wall, combining shadow, reflection, subtle color, and delicate forms into a compelling synthesis that evoke half-forgotten fairy tales. It was left to Meg Harders and Ray Charles White to provide a dose of realism, which they did with their detailed, almost scientific portrayals of plants and leaves.