Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 148

EASTBAY-OTOf ART SCEfJE By MIRIAM DUNG AN CROSS Tribune Art Critic Paintings by two prizewin-ning Eastbay women enhance the San Francisco art scene and make news, too. Oakland's Henrietta Berk is showing brilliant, dynamic abstract landscapes, figures and still lifes at Pomeroy Gallery, the charming old firehouse at 449 Pacific through March 2. Martha Borge of Berkeley presents a series of lyrical realist landscapes this month at Gump's. Poles apart, they have both been selling like hot cakes. Last week 18 of Hank's 27 works had been sold.

That's news for the Bay Area where the art market can't compare to Los Angeles. Hank's paintings are in wide demand at Southern California's Carter's Gallery. At Gump's Martha's show is peppered with "sold" spots, too. Enough of this crass shop talk. Henrietta Berk Henrietta Berk is a great colorist in the Fauve tradition and an action painter in her involvement with the act of painting.

No follower of the 1 IDEM GALLERIES HENRIETTA BERK'S LANDSCAPE 'QUIET VIEW Eastbay artist at Pomeroy Gallery in San Francisco Skewlegtliewerk etleeelly keewe AMI CAN Ainsrt 1 1 1 1 pie and blues and shadowy greens. There is a mystic quality to "Mount Saint Mary's," a vast," pulsating panorama under a pink-blasted black sky, with the college indicated as a small clot of blues offside, identified by the cross on the chapel. The dark Catalonian mood, thick impasto and bare scene of the most- abstract work must have prompted the title "Spanish Landscape." "Self Portrait," her first portrait or at least head, may do the pretty Hank a disservice, but it's a powerful painting, melding a little ol Van Gogh and Park and much of Vibrant Berk. In 'addition to a big (48 by 48) patterned still life of monumental poppies and small still lifes no less elegant for their size, there are two luminous paintings of youngsters, defined by glowing red late sunlight, in translucent beach scenes. Blue swoops arc skies in one.

An. electrified, calligraphic orange line marks ripples and surface in the other. See also at the Pomeroy Gallery the i i a 1 fire-house's red lamp ovor the doorway, spiral iron staircase and gleaming brass pole and the back garden where the fire horses waited the sound of the bell. Meet Renoir and Herbert Hoover. Renoir is the gallery cat.

Hoover is the director and a cousin of the late president. Hope "Innocence of the Bull," a magnificent sculptural painting in concrete, iron, black glass, by Hugh Wiley, OCAC instructor, has not been taken home by Hoover. His wife admired it so much Hoover bought it for a surprise while she was in Paris. A "life-size sculpture of a bull's head (curls are broken black glass) and a body in relief protrude from an "old wall" adorned with fading pink fresco design and shimmering blobs of gold. Martha Borge At Gump's, Martha Porge's exquisitely conceived and painted landscapes are variations on one theme of trees or tree, grassy land, sky and clouds.

Occasionally a barn or house nestles in the scene. These lyrical, romantic paaatings have astonishing carrying power. A number of monochromes with subtle gradations of bines, pinks or ochres. Others are noteworthy for delicate color harmonies. A fine line, almost like a miniaturist, painted or Incised, marks tree branches and grasses.

A foreground, smooth flat color area cutting the base, often at an angle, suggests a road and keeps the viewer out. Two works are composed within a circular format like "Davenport: Round View" shown with the East Bay Artists Annual at Kaiser Center Gallery and reproduced here last Sunday. The single, unrelated painting "View from Benecla" looks across the deep blue straits to the luminous, rolling hills against a clear, lighter blue sky. Fishermen will empathize with this interpretation of a familiar scene Just as aQ visitors at the gallery, including us, were doing the other day. 5 Phone 283-6113 KAXACINTIt IATAYITTI ob California where Van Gogh left off in Provence and depicts earth energy with a passion not unrelated to his.

She creates her figurative werks with abitract concerns of Park and Diebenkorn and occasionally integrates Matisse patten within the general dynamics. To this awesome heritage Henrietta brings her own special vision, her own way with color and a personal energy that charges every inch of the picture. Landscapes, still lifes, figures in landscape are first of all paintings with an Intense life of their own. The new oils frequently involve abstract color areas hard-edge or ragged clear-color rectangles after Hofmann which define the surface, interact with each other and other color elements and set up a constant vibration. Landscapes range from the hottest of hots, with magneta skies and orange, yellow, pink fields roads and horizons, to the coolest of cool "Evening Shadows" in black, deep pur- "happy accident" action school, however.

Her paintings have intense life of their own but with a plastic system. With all her squeezed-from-the-tube, knifed-on im- Eastos, there is discipline in er structure, a balance in the pull of color, of texture, an equilibrium horizontals, verticals and receding planes and a constant shift from surface to deep space. Hank takes op color where the Fauvei left off and joins nans Hofmann In Its push-pull dynamics. She paints light red Highpriootags and original oil paintings A high price tag Is not the btt or only way to ludne an original painting. You could be guided by what you like You Are Allowed One Decision in Ute evaluation and seleo-tion of a work of art And when yon come into a Arts International gallery you will see hundreds of originals canvasses every one of which costs from 5 i.

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