Featuring works by French Broad Artists Sahar Fakhoury, Sandra Brugh Moore and Virginia Pendergrass.

“Small Jewels, Paintings 12 x 12 in. or Smaller” will be on display throughout December. The reception for the show will be held Saturday, December 12, 2015 from 4-8 p.m. at their studio in Riverview Station #216 in the River Arts District.

Fakhoury says, “Although I prefer to paint on large canvases, every now and then small size paintings look attractive to me. Sometimes I like to do them for a change, at other times they solve problems.”

Plein air painting is a case in point. Because it is difficult to paint large paintings in one session outdoors, Monet returned again and again to the same outdoor scenes to produce large paintings of haystacks and cathedrals.

However, Fakhoury comments, “This summer I began painting en plein air with The Asheville Urban Landscape Project. Artists in the group go to an outdoor location with their gear and paint- bugs, onlookers, weather and all. It is easier to carry small canvases, and faster to finish before the light starts to change.”

This is the current American solution to the dilemma of catching wonderful light en plein air – paint a small canvas fast during a two-hour interval in the morning, and again in the afternoon. Larger studio pieces develop from this fresh experience.

“Starting in the late fall, or on a rainy summer day,” adds Fakhoury, “I tend to do small still life paintings in the studio. I can set it up in the studio and control the light as I wish. Small sketches give an artist the opportunity to work out composition problems or experiment with color without the investment of time and materials on a large canvas. Some of these ‘small jewels’ turn out to be wonderful in themselves.”

Fakhoury’s biggest challenge for small works is painting figures. “There is not a lot of room for my style of detail-oriented, realistic representations, “she says. “Human figures, especially in motion, are my favorite subject. A lot of my paintings are narrative, they tell the story of the moment. Sometimes it requires more than one figure on a small canvas. But the outcome, when I get it right, is always pleasing to me.”

In the 1880s, one collector famously described Whistler’s small scale works as “superficially, the size of your hand, but, artistically, as a large as a continent.” The small jewels of Fakhoury and her studio partners make ideal gifts for the season.

Fakhoury also exhibits her artwork at the Asheville Gallery of Art in downtown Asheville. Visit her website, www.sahar-art.com.

If You Go: “Small Jewels, Paintings 12 x 12 in. or Smaller” on display throughout December. Opening reception Saturday, December 12, 2015 from 4-8 p.m. at the French Broad Artists studio in Riverview Station, #216 in the River Arts District.