Paintings and photographs by ten gallery artists rouse impressions as much about memory as about observation in the exhibition Serenading Summer, opening at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, New York, on Friday, June 22.  The work will remain on view through July 31.

Each work has a sense of timelessness ripe with nostalgia, wherein a place, a time or a day, a certain kind of weather, expectancy or feeling, gives rise to the contentedness of summer being as intriguing as a serenade.

Rhapsodic line, passionate color, vistas beyond measure, the light, the air, all heighten the psychological enigma of summer impressions summoning recall for artist and viewer.  Conceiving of an exhibition of works of art around the ambiguous but poetic thought of summer and serenade brings to mind a quote from the late Henry Geldzahler, “You see color as you’ve never seen it before, as if color itself were floating in the air.  It is an elevating experience.  It makes you walk a bit lighter for the rest of the day.”

How fitting a thought to relate to Nola Zirin’s endlessly evolving palette of superb color brought to new heights in her abstract impression of skyline, landscape and waterscape titled Cane Garden Bay.

Stan Brodsky’s visually arresting painting titled Edge of Summer is glorious with hue intuitive of landscape he has visited.  Bold orchestration of blues and greens punctuated with spirited amorphous figuration brings about intelligibility to a work of sensual and visual passion resonating much like summer’s magic.

In Steps for a Dreamer, poet and visionary Elise Asher’s lyrical and evocative imagery fuses myth and mundane prompting soulful awareness as oft realized when savoring moments of summer’s mysterious transcendence.

Surreal impressions of the natural world rendered with palettes of minimal color conceivably recall déjà vu in two widely divergent compositions.  Linguria Suite (9447), Sky Pape’s symphony of black calligraphic markings in rhythmic progression frolic with the innocence of summer abandonment in an atmospheric dreamscape.

Carmen Cicero’s gripping composition of dark flattened contours contrast with brilliance of light in his painting titled In the Still of the Night.  The drama of shadow and light…of black and white deepens eerie alienation along an isolated road, poignant with presence of uncanny stillness, perchance alluding to prelude of a summer evening.

Charles Martin’s photographic image, Spill, Governor’s Island, casts hypnotic stillness that is visually and emotionally aroused with realization that the panoramic waterscape hints at objective detachment.  Yet, it is Martin’s artistic visual dialogue that pointedly subjects deference to one’s psyche wanderings reflective of reveling in a state not unlike summer’s conscious oblivion.

Photographer LeRoy Henderson’s colorful image of costumed participants in an annual highly anticipated event -West Indian Day parade, Frances Hynes’ painting Cottage at the Lake, a charming small house with pink roof tucked within the dignity of summer flora, Kay WalkingStick’s Aquidneck Cliffs, an endless vista with concerto of sea rushing against rock and Philemona Williamson’s painting titled Sunday Picnic with children at play wrapped in the glow of mellow light….each work visually articulates the sense of summer’s weightlessness.… the abstraction of connection with summer as lovely as a serenade.