CLARK GALLERY Along with Scott Prior and the late Gregory Gillespie.

CLARK GALLERY

Along with Scott Prior and the late Gregory Gillespie, painter Randall Deihi has earned the moniker "Valley Realist" with his painstakingly detailed oil portraits and nostalgic, campy vignettes. greatest in quantity of the twenty-nine still lifes, portraits, and landscapes lately on view capture the displays and characters of Deihl's beloved Pioneer Valley in rural western Massachussetts. Quirky however familiar images of old bottle collectors, wizened farmers, and somewhat old couples in laundromats fill panels and canvases ranging in scale from eleven by means of ten inches to four at seven feet. Deihl is also fascinated through roadside kitsch: shingled trailers, pink plastic flamingos, garden Madonnas, "Frosty Joy" ice-cream stands, and giant fiberglass Indians along the Mohawk Trail.

Working from snapshots and sketches, Deihl embellishes everyday reality with exaggerated scale, intensified lighting, and heightened colors worthy of Disney studios. He many times includes figures and animals in juxtapositions that give a romantic edge to unaccompanied roadside scenes. The panoramic White Station, 1997 reveals a bleak geography: an abandoned gas station before fluorescent-green tree below a moonless sapphire night canopy of heaven The contours of the simple white-and-red Art Deco building are be sounded backed by the boarded-up windows and sum of two units vintage gas pumps. Deihl adds a tie of narrative touches to this image of an American architectural vernacular: tire tracks and a solitary black-and-white dog who stands in the shadows forlornly gazing into the distance.

A sizable arrange of small panels attests to Deihl's mastery of portraiture. Closely observ sharp-focus images of the somewhat old friends, and Deihl himself summon forth the work of Otto Dix in their excruciating attention to detail and flaw. In golden Self Portrait, zooo, the artist gives a biting depiction of his hold pensive face, with piercing in the dumps eyes and tan, wrinkled skin. The almost Flemish illusionism and chiaroscuro of his head contrast with the flatly pay backed lines of his red-and-blue V-neck shirt and the mustard golden backgtound. Farmer, 2000, a tiny panel painting, depicts a shriveled and toothless farmer holding the top of a shovel The contours of his craggy face and neck mimic the doublings of his gray shirt and baseball cap. This native of the small Massachusetts town of Goshen is single of the relics that Deihl try to gets to capture and preserve.

In Portrait of Greg 1999-2000 Deihl's late best friend sits in his Belchertown studio amid a still-life setup of fruit, canvases, brushes, and frames. The patterns of spilled paint onward the floor around Gillespie reverberation those on the artist's pigment-stained clothing. In his canvas, Deihl has faithfully reproduc Gillespie's unfinished painting of a smiling woman leaning not at home of a frame and an handwritten notations on the wall (the names and phone numbers of Deihl, Prior, and artist Jane Lund) Gillespie's furrowed, scowling face appear to bes to display the selfreflective angst that frequently accompanied the realization of his art, perhaps hinting also at what assumes in retrospect to be a darker contemplation: This studio is where Gillespie was to hang himself this past April, shortly after Deihl's painting was completed

Deihl adds candor and irony to an ephemeral world populated through spirited loners. In a manner hauntingly evocative of Grunt thicket and Edward Hopper, Deihi's carefully giveed vistas memorialize an aging and vanishing America.

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