December 13, 2004 - January 13, 2005 - "Windows and Doors" at Gallery 5 in Old Town Albuquerque, NM. 

This is an article from the West Side Journal of the Albuquerque Journal, published on December 17, 2004.  

Galleries Put On Last Artscrawl of 2004

By Rozanna M. Martinez
Of the Journal

Friday, December 17, 2004

Twenty-one galleries will open their doors citywide in celebration of the final Artscrawl of 2004.  Galleries from Old Town to the Northeast Heights will feature openings and artists' receptions and unveil new works by various artists including local favorites.  MoRo Gallery in Old Town will feature "Starry Night," an exhibit of nocturnal works by gallery owner Angus Macpherson.  An Artscrawl reception will be held from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. today at the gallery located at 806 Mountain NW.  "I do work very much like a watercolorist in a lot of ways," said Macpherson, who works with acrylics. "What is nice about acrylics is they can be opaque or transparent and I think I use both of those qualities. I work with them flat or horizontal or sometimes up against a wall like a water painter."  Macpherson mixes his acrylic paints with water to create his unique technique.  He said painters find a language to express themselves and the combination of acrylic and water is the medium he uses to communicate.  
    "Several of (the 'Starry Night' works) come from an idea that I've been working on for the last 10 years about night time," Macpherson said. "There's a strange paradox of what we consider light. Some of these starry night ones ... are of stars a billion miles away. The light we get to use (is) from these suns that are forever away. The fun thing about this material is that the paintings are about that."
    Some works from Macpherson's previous show "Cities" also will be on display.  Coincidentally, the works feature city nighttime scenes.  A large part of Macpherson's career featured paintings of daytime scenes, he said. He then became fascinated with the lighting you see in your home when you get up at night or in cities after the sun has gone down.  "A lot of the (works featuring) cities begin with photographs," Macpherson said. "They wouldn't be art if they didn't become something else. So they are changed in that manner to shoot for poetry or aim for some sort of communication that becomes sort of fictitious."
    Macpherson opened the MoRo gallery in May.  "It's a 100-year-old house," director Darla VanWinkle said. "It's got all the original hardwood floors. It has so much character. It's unreal."
    Artist Peter Berry, of Asheville, N.C., will take a break from his trip around the United States with his family to attend an opening and artist's reception for his one-man show "Windows and Doors" at Gallery 5 in Old Town.  The gallery, at 1919 Old Town Road NW No. 6, will feature about 17 of Berry's works.
    Berry is traveling the country in a motor home with his family. An account of his trip may be found at www.berrytrip.us.  "We have no specific agenda," Berry said. "What we do is we sort of check in to see where we need to be. We are on a spiritual quest ... It leads us to unexpected places."  Berry said he came to New Mexico to visit after meeting "some great people" from Rio Rancho and Corrales in Padre Island, Texas.
    Nine of Berry's paitured in the Gallery 5 show were painted in Texas and finished in New Mexico, he said. Berry also painted eight in Bernalillo.  "We have a sort of fold-up aluminum table and I built an easel and have a travel easel," Berry said. "I mainly paint abstract works. Some of it is drawn from nature."   The eight pieces painted in Bernalillo include an ascension series of five works that explore the themes of resistance, acceptance, emergence, alignment and surrender, he said.  "They are really based on the spiritual path that my family and I have been following for the last year, which is aligning ourselves with the spirit or God and really learning to work with that energy and surrender to it," Berry said.
    The three other pieces painted in Bernalillo include two that are systems paintings.  "They are older imagery paintings of connected systems that had to do with the landscape here (Bernalillo)," Berry said. "All those connectors that connect the tubes together are sort of the Earth and sky. Soul, spirit and ego are kind of our spiritual structure as well."
    One of Berry's works featured in the show was inspired by the subconscious.   "('Neurons') has some of the same formal concerns that I have in terms of creating tension through the mix of atmosphere and quality," Berry said. "The imagery came from a dream. Sometimes I need to paint something to move on to something else."