Bruce Marsh, distinguished painter and professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, has created hundreds of landscape paintings, many of them of areas around his home in Ruskin. For "Bruce Marsh: Now and Then," curator Mark Ormond collected 10 years' worth of them and has installed them in Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art in Sarasota.
Marsh's landscapes have often been more than beautiful representations, though they are that, too. His canvases can be multiple windows into a scene, painted as one might look at it, sweeping around for different perspectives, taking a long view then a closeup. His representational style is a wondrous effect to study, a dexterous, subtle blend of many brushstrokes that borders on abstraction until all cohere as something we recognize. Some of his current works address development in his rural area.
The sad coda to this exhibition about nature and its cycles is the unexpected death of gallery owner Allyn Gallup on Nov. 7 after a stroke. He was 74. Gallup's gallery is among the most interesting in the region and represented several of my favorite area artists. Of course he had a great eye but he also had a great intuitive feeling for art that might not ever be famous but would always be good. His widow, Sheila Moore, plans to continue running the gallery.