Artist showing work in Carson City gallery

Susanne Forestieri — an artist who paints and draws a range of subjects from show girls and dancers to landscapes and New York City street scenes — is showing work in Carson City.

The Capital City Arts Initiative presents its exhibition, Wish You Were Here, by Forestieri at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery, 885 E. Musser St.

Forestieri’s work often represents an impressionistic style in her preferred media — oil, charcoal, pastel and pencil. Her collection of small figurative paintings are two decades in the making.

“I began the series in 1995 based on photographs that I took more than 20 years ago of my daughter and her friends while they were playing dress-ups,” Forestieri said. “My work gradually evolved from painting depictions of children’s fantasy play to painting every day intimate moments in people’s lives when they reveal something about themselves that is real and precious. Pictorial spaces between and around figures describe emotional relationships as well as individual isolation. Each painting depicts a small drama that leaves something to the viewer’s imagination.”

Her work also reflects abstract interpretations of city and landscapes.

“Where I grew up the sky was usually glimpsed between tall buildings, not the dominant feature of the landscape, but a column of blue. When I moved out west from NYC I said ‘there’s so much sky.’ I loved it,” she said.

Forestieri studied at the Art Students League in New York City from 1971 to 1974 and earned a master’s in education in 2001 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts cum laude in 1995, both from UNLV. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1996. The Las Vegas Art Museum presented her work in a retrospective exhibition in 2003. The Las Vegas City Hall, Bellagio Hotel, Girl Scouts of America, and the McCarran International Airport have her art in their permanent collections. She teaches drawing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and shows her work nationally.

The exhibition essay, Light and Shadow: A Las Vegas Palette, is written by Kristen Peterson.

CCAI will host a reception for the artist from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday; Forestieri will give a talk about her work at 5:30 p.m. The exhibit will be in the gallery Friday through Jan. 18.

The reception and the exhibition are free and the public is cordially invited. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

For information, go to www.arts-initiative.org.