Elaine Mokhtefi and Bell Chevigny: Face and Place

On exhibit from January 7 - February 15

The Grady Alexis gallery at El Taller Latino Americano is pleased to present Face and Place, an exhibition featuring the oil paintings of Upper West Side-based neighbors, Elaine Mokhtefi and Bell Chevigny. On Riverside Drive, only one floor and a courtyard separate them. They both favor portraits and figures (of New Yorkers of all stripes) and landscapes of far-away places.

After a career of teaching, the writer Bell Chevigny turned to visual art in 2005. She has studied at the Arts Students League and The National Academy School of Fine Arts. Her oil paintings are in private collections in the Bay Area, Portland, Oregon, and Manhattan.

Also a writer and jewelry-maker, Elaine Mokhtefi studied painting in Paris and at the Arts Students League of New York beginning in the 90s. Her paintings have appeared in exhibitions in Paris and New York. She works in her studio in Harlem and has painted landscape in New Mexico, Buenos Aires, Vermont, and along 125th Street.

This exhibition will feature examples of both figurative and landscape painting. Classically trained, each woman has a studied quality to her work. The paintings are mostly concerned with the figure, as nuances of color, that not only create form, but give the illusion of light across the canvas. Viewers will also find that these mature painters present an evocative depiction of their subject's psychology that elevate the paintings from general studies to an artistic representation worth noting.