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Published: December 31 2011

Sue Boydston, whose fine art is currently on exhibit at the Red Trombone Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, says water has always been her muse.

Streams, ponds, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans have attracted her since childhood, with summers spent on the Jersey Shore, where she was a lifeguard and junior Olympian.

As the spouse of a 30-year U.S. Navy officer, the connection was reinforced by postings and travels that took her to the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Caribbean seas, the Delaware River, the waters of the Hawaiian Islands and Puget Sound. Since 2000, her current home in Naples has afforded her the chance to get close to the Everglades and the Gulf of Mexico.

"Water has just been a magnet for me," Boydston said. "Everywhere I've ever lived, I lived near the water."

That fascination with water – and her 20 years as an art teacher, many of them in inner city schools, where she developed programs for gifted and special needs children – flows through her work, in watercolors, oils and acrylics, multi-media and prints.

Influences of Matisse, O'Keefe, Hockney, Miro and Klee are apparent, but Boydston's work is hardly circumscribed.

"I use line, shape, positive and negative space, and color balance to achieve visual tension that takes the viewer to the edge of the design and back again, visually inspired to continue traveling the surface and exploring the narrative," Boydston said.

"It is my desire to entertain the viewer within the two dimensional confines with the illusion of multi spatial directions. Most of all I seek to engage the viewer in a story they feel free to interpret."

There is much to interpret.

"Crossing the Alley" is her acrylic on canvas vision of traversing the Everglades, complete with Seminole references, bursting greenery and, of course, cooling water.

"Alexander's Playground," gouache and pencil on paper, is inspired by watching her grandson's attraction to a tree in a playground even while surrounded with other distractions, seems at once fresh and evocative of Matisse.

"Waccamaw Morning" is a still and mysterious watercolor, reminiscent of the Highwaymen but all Boydston's own, one of the fruits of several trips down the Intracoastal Waterway on a shallow-draft trawler from the Chesapeake Bay to Florida and some of the more remote Southwest Florida swamp ways.

"I've studied a lot of styles," she said. "I have a tendency to take a concept in the direction, with the media and the style, that best expresses that concept."

Sue Boydston's work is featured at Red Trombone Gallery through Jan. 7. Her work will remain available at any time through the gallery.

Also currently at the gallery:

* Wood carvings and turnings by Lee Sky, a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who has lived in Fort Lauderdale since 1986. A highlight: "Comet Catcher," a piece of Norfolk Island pine worked to porcelain-fine thinness, and festooned with pulled and blown glass, and "Rough Hewn," a large mahogany bowl, carved just to the point of strong elegance.

* Photographs by Sheila Bechert, Red Trombone's owner. Be sure to see the outstanding "Piccolo teresota in una finestra," taken in Tuscany, and "Beyond Fences," shot in Patagonia.

Red Trombone – A Gallery
Featuring Refreshing Affordable Art

North Beach Art District
3313 N.E. 33rd Street Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33308
954 530-9539
www.redtrombonegallery.com

Gallery Hours
Tuesday - Saturday 1:30 - 7:00, or by appointment
Art Walk First Saturday of Each Month 6:00 - 11:00

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