The vivacious, 90-piece show, which ranges from sculpture, paintings and photographs to conceptual work, photorealism and tapestry, is a mix of longtime locals and new voices — among them Deborah Buck, who, according to Miller, “paints to the beat of her own drummer.”
And the Sagaponack-based artist doesn’t deny that, often using her art to respond to current events and societal issues with boldness and humor.
“I’m very interested in the layers of my life, I’m very interested in the layers of meaning in things and I’m very interested in the physical layers in painting,” she said. “It just makes you dig a little bit more. I never want to make paintings where you go, ‘Huh, that’s cute.’ My paintings are not cute.”
She interrupted herself with a laugh. “They’re to be looked at, they’re to be thought about and, I hope, to take something away,” she continued. “I hope they leave the world a different place than it was before I made them — and perhaps somebody feels challenged to question something, even if it’s just, ‘Why would someone make a painting that looks like that?’”
Of her three paintings in the show, it is perhaps “Uphill Battle” that most solicits this reaction — considering the giant pink caterpillar wearing neon lipstick, donning her finest shoes on each of her feet in a commentary on feminism and the fight against marginalization in the art world, she said.
“I fill my world with these characters and I wish I could walk outside and see them in the backyard. Wouldn’t that be fun?” she said. “They make the world more interesting to me. As a kid, I spent a lot of time by myself and reading fairy tales and ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and I just really wished that the frog on the edge of the pond would talk, or he’d wear a crown, or I could walk outside and see something like that big pink caterpillar, and that she could talk.”
While Buck explores absurdity, romanticism and the darker side of fairy tales through the interplay of surrealism and abstraction, Flanders-based artist Isadora Capraro looks at the intersection of nature and the human figure in a quieter approach, offering peace and tranquility in her yoga paintings — two of which, “Water Body” and “Lord of the Fishes,” are on view in the show.