"Balloon Patterns III", Oil on Canvas.
Nancy Todd Roberts
Balloon Patterns Series
10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Images Gallery
7320 West 80th St.
Overland Park, KS
913.232.7113
Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
Artist’s site: http://www.nancytoddroberts.com
Gallery site: http://www.imagesgallery.org
The new year is still more than a month away, but Nancy Todd Roberts has already broken out the balloons.
Okay, so the balloons she paints are of a different sort — hot air, rather than helium — but her Balloon Patterns Series, part of the opening group show at Images Gallery’s new location, is most definitely festive.
The center front of Images is given over to bold patterns in bright primary and secondary colors, all on the bag-and-gondola theme.
It’s a departure from much of Roberts’ other work in oils. She has long favored a chiaroscuro style, playing light and dark against each other to deepen her paintings, but these are all about sunlight illuminating ripstop nylon.
Roberts has retained her trademark realism, though, and there is still plenty of depth in the balloon pieces because she has continued her practice of adding layer upon layer of color, each showing through the layers above it.
Some canvases depict groups of balloons. Others — like Balloon Patterns III, today’s featured piece — take a close-up view. Whatever its scope, though, each work is marked not only by an attention to pattern but by a glow partly physical and partly emotional.
The former is due to Roberts’ skill at painting light. The latter stems from humanity’s long fascination with flight.
Whether or not one has ever been in the gondola of a hot air balloon, there’s something in the human spirit that resonates with the idea of soaring above the earth, carried along by the winds, and enjoying a panoramic view stretching to distant horizons.
Roberts’ balloons might not mark any holiday … but the freedom to soar, even vicariously, is certainly reason to celebrate.
