Beauty Out of Bounds

A Solo Exhibition with Anne Sherwood Pundyk
March 23 – May 5, 2024

Public Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23 | 4PM – 7PM | EEA Main Gallery [133 E. Main St., Riverhead, NY 11901]

Across two Galleries: EEA Main Gallery [133 E. Main St., Riverhead] & 11 West Gallery [11 W. Main St., Peconic Crossing, Riverhead]
Gallery Hours:

Thursdays 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Fridays 2 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturdays 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Sundays 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Please Join Us for These Gallery Events

Finding Art in Generational Trauma with filmmaker Mary Hanlon
- Saturday, April 6th at 1:00 p.m. in the EEA Main Gallery
- Reserve Your Spot
Artist to Artist with artist Rainer Gross and art writer David Cohen
- Saturday, April 13th at 3:00 p.m. in the 11 West Gallery
- Reserve Your Spot
Painted Space / Architectural Space with architect Andrew Berman
- Sunday, April 14th at 1:00 p.m. in the 11 West Gallery
- Reserve Your Spot
Art is Personal with art producer, curator Jill Brienza
- Saturday, April 27th at 1:00 p.m. in the 11 West Gallery
- Reserve Your Spot
Rites of Spring Music Festival: Sounds of Images III presents Strange and Wonderful with cellist Mariel Roberts and readers from the North Fork community
- Sunday, May 5th at 5:00 p.m. in the 11 West Gallery
- Purchase Tickets

Art Outside Convention

Pundyk’s unstretched paintings slip free from expectation. As a young girl she understood intuitively how to shape simple materials such as fabric and string to ground her thoughts. Much later she found she could adapt these everyday forms to make fine art. Operating beyond tradition has been hard won over many decades.

The artist’s unstretched paintings soar high and wide. Stained sections of drop cloth canvas dangle telltale threads from their seams. Downpours of color buckle the patched surfaces. Crisp colored-pencil lines float amongst radiant circles and stripes. Together they test the roiling flows.

Pundyk moves experimental methods between her intimate works on stitched paper and the larger canvases. Activated by color, each painting ultimately has its own improvised story. Her “Sentence Structure” photographs of partially revealed hand-written journals examine the elusive process of self-reflection. At the center of the exhibition, pages of her artist’s book, “The Garden” are nailed to the wall, emphatically unfurling messages of the heart.

The show includes large, abstract paintings, stitched works on paper, photography, and an artist’s book. Never-before exhibited and key archival works created over ten years chronicle a chapter of personal loss and acceptance.

See the Artwork List

Videographer: Molly Mary O’Brien, single channel, color, video, 10:14 minutes, September 13, 2019

The Artist

Anne Sherwood Pundyk’s CV

Anne Sherwood Pundyk is an artist and writer based in Mattituck and Manhattan.

She is an innovative painter who brings together the traditions of abstract art, textiles and storytelling to create fine art that is wholly original.

Her unstretched paintings are constructed from stained, cropped and sewn sections of drop cloth canvas. Activated by color, each painting ultimately has its own improvised story. Elements of her studio work link directly to her photographs, artist’s books, writing and performance pieces.

Pundyk was first schooled in drawing as a child by her artist grandmother, centering her experience of art-making in the home. Her family frequently relocated throughout the US. Each move expanded her exposure to different facets of art and art history. She studied at The Corcoran School in Washington, DC and with the artist Sam Gilliam in her teens. She explored the light and color-focused California arts scene in Los Angeles and the museums of Paris in as a student at Pomona College in Claremont, CA. At RISD in Providence, RI as a graduate student she was guided by the artist Pat Adams and entered the vortex of tradition and contemporary invention on the east coast. She subsequently raised her own family with her husband in New York City.

Pundyk has engaged in her art making, exhibiting and art writing over the last 35 years. She relocated her studio to the North Fork ten years ago. Curator Helen A. Harrison observed, “…[Pundyk’s] work suggests that understanding requires another interpretive tool, or perhaps a personal surrender to a deeper, less accessible, level of cognition.” The move has been the catalyst for a fundamental re-centering of her art around adapting everyday forms with an eye toward questioning convention.

Her solo exhibitions include TheBrownStoneArt, Brooklyn, NY; Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY; Adah Rose Gallery, Kensington, MD; Queens College Art Center, Queens, NY; and Susan Eley Fine Art, New York, NY. Selected group shows include The Works Museum, Newark, OH; Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY; Pierogi Gallery, New York, NY; VSOP Projects, Greenport, NY; The University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT; and Art Access, Columbus, OH. Her work has been acquired by Anthony Grant, Katie Couric, and Cy Twombly, among others. Institutional collections with her work include Barclay’s Bank, State Street Bank, The New School, Franklin Furnace, and Denison University. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, artcritical, The Brooklyn Rail and The Washington Post.

For more information, to arrange interviews and private viewings with the artist, contact Wendy Weiss: gallery@eastendarts.org