“Looking at the Land: Color and Form” at Washtenaw Community College's Gallery One uses these two aesthetic attributes to reflect the exhibit’s “rich colors of nature.”

The two-artist exhibition—Martha Armstrong’s paintings and Susanne Stephenson’s ceramics—consists of art (as the gallery’s exhibit statement tells us) that's “different at first glance” but further examination reveals similarities in these artists’ “observations about land.”

The exhibit follows in the spirit of last autumn’s WCC Gallery One “Looking at the Land: The Rural View” combining University of Michigan professor emeritus John Stephenson’s ceramic sculpture with Washtenaw Community College art instructor Elaine Wilson’s oil paintings.

Eastern Michigan University professor emeritus Susanne Stephenson’s art is personal, with dashes of chromaticity, while Pennsylvania Academy of Arts critic Martha Armstrong’s expressive paintings give us a keen sense of the landscape she depicts.

Just as John Stephenson’s ceramics and Elaine Wilson’s paintings touched on common themes, there’s most certainly a touch of colorful nature in Stephenson’s ceramics — with just enough abstraction in Armstrong’s work to indicate this second duo’s affinity.

Armstrong says of her 13 oil on linen paintings, “the smaller paintings in this group are premier coup paintings, done as warm ups for larger paintings. I get into my studio and try to go for what I see in one breath so to speak, like playing a piece of music from beginning to end.”

This accounts for the dramatic immediacy of Armstrong’s inspired, exhilarating “Four Studies”—four small paintings occupying a single linen working surface. Each of these works is a bit like an improvisational jazz riff with Armstrong clearly going where her mood takes her. Each of these works—depicting varying abstraction of trees—modulates around her use of browns and oranges to exemplify detail. By contrast, Armstrong says her larger compositions represent another approach: “The larger paintings start like the smaller ones, but I go after them over several days—or weeks. Sometimes I paint out completely what I have, or scrape the painting down and go after pieces of it.

“Then I work on them in the studio, to try to make clear what I have. I keep a peripheral eye on them while I work on other things. Something will draw me to adjust one piece, then another. I often take them out again to the landscape.”

The result is a modified first-hand observation that melds her visual impressions with her inspiration. Successively paring down her observation allows Armstrong to focus on the intuition of her material until only its essentiality asserts itself.

Of her large-scale oil on linen paintings, “Yellow Patch” shows Armstrong’s approach at best form. The painting depicts a group of trees in what seems to be a background urban landscape, but it is also far more than this. Primarily composed of intersecting diagonal and vertical lines (except for the aforementioned trees); the painting takes full advantage of Armstrong’s philosophy in that the work is a vividly rendered abstraction.

But there are two intersecting elements to the work that lift it well beyond mere landscape or abstraction. First, the work’s key element—a foreground tree—is composed of vivid brown and green diagonal lines whose contrast with the balance of the composition gives the painting a flamboyant inner-dynamic. And second, never underestimate the power of a single colorfield—in this instance a single sunlit yellow rectangle in the corner of the composition—whose precise placement balances the composition.

Susanne Stephenson’s 11 terra-cotta ceramic contributions to the exhibit set off nicely against Armstrong’s paintings. The remarkably vibrant color of her glaze animates her creativity.

In particular, her “Cascadilla Gorge,” a medium-sized colorful terra cotta bowl on a freestanding base, reflects the creek it’s meant to represent: a striking waterfall running adjacent to Ithaca, NY’s Cornell University.

“The images I deal with,” says Stephenson in her artist’s statement to the exhibit, “are fragmented and abstract. The landscape becomes condensed as I try to express a very large image concept in the relatively small space of the pottery form.

“The impact of the material clay on my ideas is important because of its plastic and tactile qualities. It helps me pull out the physical and gesture possibilities in my work.”

As such, what is abstract in her art mirrors Stephenson’s coming to grips with the world as she sees it. And the equally lustrous color of her ceramics—somewhat like Armstrong’s vigorous line—manifests itself in her grappling with the world.

“Cascadilla Gorge” is a culmination of this struggle. The ceramic bowl’s gleaming finish represents a cascading narrow fall sweeping down the steep passage of its sides. Just as its widened bottom tapers up to an expansive set of lips whose gape opens unevenly below the stable base.

Additionally, Stephenson’s mottled hues—a striated combination of gray and pink for the base and blue-yellow for the rim—gives the ceramic its energetic, roiling appearance. All-in-all, this is a lot of effort (as well as intention) to pour into a single work of art. But Stephenson’s devotion to color and form makes “Cascadilla Gorge” a worthy representation of the world as she finds it as funneled through the insight of her ceramic.

Looking at the Land: Color and Form” will continue through June 3 at Washtenaw Community College Gallery One, Student Center Building Room 108, 4800 E. Huron River Dr. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Tuesday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday; and 10 a.m.-noon Friday. For information, call 734-477-8512.