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Palace Theatre to feature works of Darien artist
Jan Dilenschneider

 

STAMFORD, September 2017 -- Jan Dilenschneider, a Darien landscape artist who has championed the cause of preserving our environment in exhibits worldwide, will display her paintings in a new show titled “Paint the Beautiful World” at Stamford’s Palace Theatre.

 

The show, which will run from September 20 to December 31, will take place in the recently refurbished Sackler Gallery and in Café Teatro at The Palace Theatre.

 

Commenting on the historic exhibition, Executive Director Michael E. Moran, said, “We are anxiously awaiting Jan’s new exhibit. It’s going to be a pleasure having her vibrant work bring life to our unique venue. She will give this singular and visionary place full of panache and a real memory of arts, an artistic and forward outlook for a new chapter in its history.”

 

Dilenschneider is an expressionist painter whose solo shows in Paris, Monaco and the United States have been much acclaimed. For her exhibit at The Palace, she has divided the paintings into themes based on the idea behind the works:

  • DECALCOMANIA  is a series where one surface is painted and then pressed onto or printed onto a second surface, either canvas or aluminum.  This gives wonderful texture and a haunting mirror image that can be worked on.

  • HOMAGE TO LEAVES is themed to help the viewer appreciate the beauty of the everyday leaf and to “fall in love with nature again all over again.”

  • REEDS, RIVERS AND REFLECTIONS highlights her fascination with the beautiful landscape, its colors, variations and the reflections in water.  “One can read so much about life in a landscape,” she says.

 

“Artists have a rare platform to make a point, address issues, and inform the viewer about important subjects – about the needs of their world,” she says.

“From transforming the environment, to the suppression of the artistic voice in many countries, to the need for hope and opportunity among the young people of the world, artists must use their talent and stature to bring about positive change for the betterment of everyone.” 

 

Pursuing this  theme, she titled her second show in Paris, “It’s a Beautiful World, What Are We Doing to Protect It?” A recent show at the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, was called “Eco Visions” and featured 21 paintings focused on nature.

 

Though Dilenschneider does not see her mission as provoking controversy, she acknowledges an artist’s work can be controversial.  In sharing visions and expressions of the world, the artist has a responsibility to represent in their medium how they view the world; to invite the viewer’s own intellectual input in interpreting that work of art; to embrace freedom of expression; and to support such freedom among artists and people everywhere, she says.

 

Preserving freedom of expression is another theme she advanced in her third Paris show in 2015, not long after an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during which a dozen members of its staff were assassinated for publishing an irreverent cartoon of the prophet Mohammed.

 

“We as artists have to stand up for freedom of expression in all its forms,” says Dilenschneider, who with her husband, Robert, developed The Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Scholar Rescue Award in the Arts, which rescues artists and arts scholars from repressive regimes around the world. She believes that we all must support those who exercise that freedom, especially under the severe restraints that some countries enact.

 

The Janet Hennessey Dilenschneider Scholar Rescue Award in the Arts is administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE), one of the largest international exchange organizations in the world, and has provided life-saving fellowships that have taken oppressed artists and their families out of danger and allowed them to create and flourish. 

 

The opening reception will take place at The Palace Theatre, 61 Atlantic Street, on September 20 from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Admission is free but you must RSVP before September 20.

 

For more information and to RSVP, call The Palace Theatre Box Office at (203) 325-4466.

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