Three Women Draw: Gabrielle Barzaghi, Susan Erony, Ann Ledy
Gloucester's Jane Deering Gallery
By: Deering - Aug 11, 2025
Three Women Draw: Gabrielle Barzaghi, Susan Erony, Ann Ledy
Jane Deering Gallery, September 5 – 28, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday September 6, 2025, 4 – 6 pm
Artists’ Talk: Sunday September 21, 2025, 3 – 4 pm
19 Pleasant St, next to Cape Ann Museum,
Gloucester, MA 01930-5937
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk. Paul KleThree Women Draw brings together three artists whose work differs in style, but not in seriousness. Gabrielle Barzaghi, Ann Ledy and Susan Erony all feel a need to make art, a need that goes beyond choosing to do so, and one that makes their studios the places they feel most at home. In this show, the unifying element is drawing, the basis of art making for all of them. Drawing is a universal practice, though most people may not realize it. Anyone who learns to write, learns, in effect, to make marks, to draw, and mark making has been a human practice going back tens of thousands of years.
Artist’s statements and photo credits.
Artist’s Statement: Ann Ledy
Drawing is fundamental to my visual vocabulary. It can be a mark, a gestural line, or a suggestive image. It is where I begin. Sometimes my drawings are works of art in and of themselves. Other times they simply give orientation to my composition. Overall, my drawings are generated from an internal zeitgeist.
My drawings in this exhibition, Three Women Draw, are a liberal interpretation of drawing ens?. It is a circular form found in Zen art and Japanese aesthetics. These drawings were created with one fluid gestural line. The four large ens? drawings in this exhibition were drawn with a Japanese brush, India ink on paper. The set of nine smaller ens? drawings were drawn with graphite on paper. I am captivated by the culture of Japan and its aesthetic. I have visited Japan numerous times and briefly worked in Kanazawa as an educator. I have a particular appreciation for Kyoto’s Japanese gardens; and the high art of calligraphy. These particular ens? drawings of mine are a record of a moment in time and place.
https://annledy.com
Artist’s Statement: Gabrielle Barzaghi
I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. Le Corbusier
Many of my works spring from my imagination, while others are the result of close observation or drawing from life. Often my drawings are a combination of both. When I draw it feels natural and what happens, happens.
My large drawing in Three Women Draw is a visual exposé of the past seven years of ghastly, tragic, and absurd news reports. The Nightly News is composed of 30 graphite drawings organized into a large grid. The series is ongoing.
The two India ink drawings, Feeding and Fighting, are commentary on two problems in the world: getting enough to eat, and war.
https://gabriellebarzaghi.com
Artist’s Statement: Susan Erony
In every age, an artist has to find his or her own artistic voice, something often clearer in retrospect than in the present. For many years, my artwork and I have been preoccupied with society’s inhumanities, but today, I feel too close to most current events to contextualize them well — I need time for retrospection and crave a break to delve into the natural world and its beauty. It is something of an artistic vacation, but one with which I am falling in love, with drawing as the intimate connection to my work.
I know art and politics are strange bedfellows. The first is in the realm of the spiritual, the magical and unconscious. We want art to move us, help us transcend the quotidian, find peace in a troubled world. We love beauty. Politics is in the realm of governing, and is about power. At its best, its goals are humane and generous, but that is often not the case.
For the show, Three Women Draw, my goal has been primarily to focus on nature as a healing balm, but I included a piece on migration as well, a harkening to my immigrant family and to all those who have to leave their homes because of nature’s changes and other troubles and now have increasing difficulty finding places to land.
https://susanerony.com/, https://matthewswiftgallery.com/artist/susan-erony/, https://plunkettlakepress.com/covers.html
Photo Credits:
Gabrielle Barzaghi, Feeding, 2025, India ink on paper, 20 3/4 x 29 1/2 inches
Susan Erony, Holly Fern, 2025, Acrylic, pencil, ink, paper, acrylic medium on canvas
12 x 16 inches
Ann Ledy, Dance IV, 2019, India ink on Arches, 18 x 24 inches