Meeting Stephanie Langley for the first time and walking into her studio was an experience of pure joy!  It was as if I had entered into a subliminal realm where images, patterns and painting styles from different eras and disciplines played happily with and off each other. Her work is delicate, surprising, balanced and exciting. In short, her work is remarkable.

When my friend, Robert Armstrong, invited me over to his house and had me open a small green vintage suitcase from the 1950’s filled with 100+ works of what he explained were influenced by “semiotics” (signs and meaning) that he had made in the mid 1970’s- 80’s, I was astounded! I truly had never seen anything quite like it. The work was very funny, very odd, and extremely clever. There was more to it than you could get your head around at first glance. After a while, most pieces evoked laughter, followed by revelatory, “Ah ha!”

This, then, is a very unique, one-of-a-kind, two-person exhibition, with close to 100 works of art, in a small gem of a gallery surrounded by a serene Zen sculpture garden. A juxtaposition all on its own.

I am very excited to have been asked to curate this show, and be able to bring these artists to you.

Jim Dultz

Revisiting my artwork for this show (made in the mid 1970’s and 80’s) has been a little like traveling back to distant but familiar places.  Back then, the cross currents of the art scene and critical responses to it were dynamic. Seasoned by analytical, philosophical and semiotic (study of symbols and meanings) approaches to art and culture, my art at that time often included (and even required) words. The format of a pair of figures or images became an ongoing setting for this work, with the intention of exploring and playing with a mix of origins, contexts, conventions, voices and styles.  In the decades since, my art has found other ways to play with this mix.  Robert Armstrong

“The works in this show were created from six years ago to just last week. I like to think that my work has an open narrative quality caused by the juxtaposition of contrasting visual elements that jar the viewer into questioning what they’re viewing. I love contrast and I like to juxtapose abstract composition, representational forms and differing styles of art to create my work. I was influenced heavily by David Salle, one of the first postmodern painters, and the P&D art movement, who made it okay for me to embrace painting for beauty’s sake.”  Stephanie Langley

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