In Plain Site: Landscapes from the Gerald Mead Collection

Hiding in plain sight at the northern edge of West Seneca is the Charles E. Burchfield Nature & Art Center.

Untitled landscape by William West (born 1922). Oil on paper, 1954.

To find this idyllic 29 acres along the Buffalo Creek, one has only to pull off busy Union Road, park, and walk 100 feet to be transported into a hidden world of trails, woods, and gardens.

Located literally in the shadow of famed watercolorist Charles Burchfield’s former Gardenville residence, one can immediately see the same flora that, for nearly 40 years, inspired the area’s most renowned painter.

Burchfield was one of many Western New York artists with a long tradition of landscape painting. The show currently on display at the center’s gallery aptly demonstrates this.

“In Plain Site: Landscapes from the Gerald Mead Collection” has been extended to run through September 28, 2008. This intimate show highlights the wide-ranging styles that regional artists have used when addressing landscape imagery.

Gerald Mead collects regional art like some people collect stamps or baseball cards. His pursuit of a single representative example of an individual artist’s work has taken place over the past 20 years, and is still ongoing.

Once the definitive artwork has been acquired, he checks it off his “want list.” Through this process, he has amassed over 400 quality paintings, prints, photos and sculptures of artists with a Western New York connection.

Mead is also an artist and an educator. In addition, he writes for local magazines (including Artvoice). He generously loans art from his personal collection to local institutions, often curating and hanging the shows himself.

“In Plain Site” is one such exhibition. The show features paintings by Jeanette Blair, Robert Flock, Hugh Laidman, and Wes Olmsted. Fine examples of photographs by Wilbur Porterfield and woodcuts and engravings by Julius Richter and Amos Sangster are also featured.

Several of the artists in the exhibition have a direct connection to Burchfield. These include two of his daughters, Catherine Parker and Martha Richter. Works by Burchfield’s former student, William E. West, and James Vullo, Burchfield’s fellow art instructor at the Art Institute of Buffalo, are also shown.

The Charles E. Burchfield Nature & Art Center is located at 2001 Union Road, West Seneca (677-4843).