Suzanne Walters

East Coast artists fail to stay grounded in ‘Supernature’

by Regina Hackett

P-I ART CRITIC

Gretchen Bennett curated “Supernature” at Howard House to introduce the idea that East Coast artists might be capable of a contemporary response to the landscape. Just kidding, but not by much. It seems the idea of the ground has lost ground in the urban north.

In “Response After Collision,” Saul Chernick draws Courbet as if he had comic book tendencies and adds a vulture. Lacking a sense of place, Matthew Day Jackson embroiders maps. He’s somewhere between pillow decoration and Magnificent obsession.

Andrew Gunther paints monsters in a childish way. If he is a child, he’s right on track.

Although Alexander Kantarovsky’s paintings are showy in a Leipzig School style, I like his inside/outside conflation. Robert de Saint Phalle’s “Standing Water” is too tricky by half.

Then there’s the fabulous Suzanne Walters. She was recently a tourist in the Canadian Rockies and is master of all she surveyed: her wolves and deer, her cougars and backpackers, her lights and darks, in watercolor or gouache.

Aaron Williams wants to take you higher. His sky chart watercolors bring a foggy intimacy to outer space. Maybe there is a hell of a good universe next door. It can’t announce itself too soon for him. in “800 Billion Stars,” he spells a new constellation “I hate this f–king world.”

Through April 12 at Howard House, 605 Second Ave.