BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY

“To be an artist you have to know who you are. If you are an artist, you know it without a doubt. The same is true for magicians.”  - Pamela Berkeley
Pamela Berkeley makes paintings from close and direct observation. She combines still life objects (some arranged as magical altars), landscape, portraiture of people and animals. Her main preoccupation in painting is the tension between the still objects close to the picture plane and the distant imagery that is farthest away. Foreground and what is behind are of equal importance, painted at the same time, side by side, locked into each other. There is no background. In fact, in a work of lace curtains, some holes are made of paint, not the threads.

Within her tightly drawn work, her underlying love of abstract painting shows in her manipulation of design, color, paint and brushwork.

She has painted so many things! Berkeley paints in oil on canvas or linen, ranging in size from 8 inches square to 6 by 8 feet. Besides landscape and interiors of Maine, Massachusetts and New York City, she is exhibiting a series of portraits of actor and artist friends arranged in odd environments.
Pamela Berkeley has been a professional artist for over 55 years and exhibited with G.W. Einstein gallery in SoHo for 20 years. She has been a member of Blue Mountain Gallery for 10 years and has shown nationally in many venues, including 12 major museums. She lived and worked in New York City and in Montville, Maine from 1975 to 2002, then moved to Sheffield, Massachusetts. She has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Academy of Arts and Letters and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. She exhibits at the Blue Mountain Gallery in NYC, and throughout the Northeast.
 
For more information about Pamela Berkeley’s solo exhibition at Blue Mountain Gallery contact the Gallery at 646-486-4730  and visit the artist,s webside www.pberkeley.com/
 
Interviews
Lori Simmons Zelenko, "Expressing a Love of Fantasy and Nature", American Artist, July 1988
Harryet Puritzman Candee, The Artful Mind, March 2024
 
Selected Bibliography
Henry, Gerrit. "Pamela Berkeley", Art News, February 1978
Sievert, Robert. "Pamela Berkeley", Arts, February 1978
Kramer, Hilton. "Solo Figures at an Exhibition", The New York Times, December 19, 1978
Berlind, Robert. "Recent Realism and the Artists' Choice Museum", Art Jounal,1981