The Windham Art Gallery is pleased to present two Featured Artists' exhibitions for the month of November. In and Out of Water by Carolyn DiNicola- Fawley, and Black, White and Gray by Leonard Ragouzeos. These exhibits run Friday, November 7-30, with an opening reception on Friday, November 7, 5:00-8:00 PM during Gallery Walk.

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Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley, Peruvian Journey, oil on canvas

Through beach vacations in her childhood, when she enjoyed collecting sharks teeth and talking with fishermen, to the recreational fishing she enjoyed while living in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia, as well ice fishing she carefully observes in Vermont, Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley has long been fascinated by fish. Many of the paintings in In and Out of Water combine fish with objects, such as antiques vases, eggs, arrows, and ladders that DiNicola-Fawley uses to express personal, political or psychological meaning in her work.Other paintings depict ice huts or “bobs” perched tentatively on thin, reflective ice. "The danger of the ice and the water and fish lurking below sparks the fear and respect that I have always had for the water," DiNicola-Fawley said. She often works using many layers of paint with cold wax and then scratches through the surface to reveal complex color and texture underneath. "I am intrigued by the way fish move in water . . . and by <their> subtle colors and patterns." Carolyn DiNicola-Fawley's work is in private and public collections throughout the US and has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Connecticut , Massachusetts and Vermont.

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Leonard Ragouzeos, Factory, book pages and ink

With this exhibit, Black, White and Gray, Leonard Ragouzeos says he chooses to work without color "because color has its own language. Color has specificity and its own manner of defining things. Black and white have an abstract language, less adorned, and in some ways are more truthful." He also wanted his work to be more open to interpretation. Ragouzeos will show both large figurative ink paintings (up to 8 feet) as well as small abstract collages. Although he is presenting two strikingly different bodies of work, Ragouzeos said, there are strong similarities between them as well. Both are linked by the media (ink on paper) and by "their use of black and gray values to transform a flat white surface into convincing illusions of dimensional form, space and light." While Ragouzeos usually has an overall design he works toward when he starts his figurative or representational paintings, the collages begin when he deconstructs a book, which he has previously dipped in ink and water and then allowed to dry. This process, which allows him to arrange and rearrange the papers until “something happens,” "is about chance, serendipity and discovery." Ragouzeos has exhibited his work throughout the Eastern seaboard, as well as in Pennsylvania and Iowa; his work is included in numerous public and private collections.