Exhibit features paintings by West Michigan artists

KALAMAZOO--Paintings by two distinguished West Michigan artists, Marilyn Johnson and Sy Ellens, will be on display through Friday, June 29, at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts on the campus of Western Michigan University.

The Richmond Center's "Summer Alumni Exhibition" will open in the Monroe-Brown Gallery Thursday, April 26. All Richmond Center exhibits are open to the public free of charge during normal gallery hours, and free parking is available.

Marilyn Johnson

Johnson has been a consistent participating artist in West Michigan for several decades, and is known for her early focus on local architecture and the urban landscape. This show will exhibit works from the last 10-12 years, in which Johnson has experimented with the use of landscape in abstract paintings that explore color and shape. While the landscape gives structure to the works, Johnson re-invents her studies of real places to overlay forms and shapes that refer her compositions.

Sy Ellens

Ellens has taken a grand view of the landscape, but the gaze starts in the abstract world. Details are brought along at the end of the process, when Ellens brings to life a landscape full of rich colors and textures--all remembrances of the Midwestern landscape of agricultural fields and wooded areas from the point of view above the horizon.

Gallery hours

RCVA galleries are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, and noon to 6 p.m. Saturday. Beginning May 1, the galleries will be open summer hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

For more information, contact Don Desmett in the Richmond Center exhibitions office at @email or (269) 387-2455.