The New Paltz painter Ryan Cronin works with large canvases, bold, culturally resonant shapes and brash colors: a style that guns for and routinely achieves the status of the iconic and populist in the same way that Keith Haring popped out of the ’80s. If you live in New Paltz or visit with any regularity, you know the work, as it does have a tendency to define the spaces in which it hangs: the Bistro often, the Oasis Café, and now in Cronin’s very own art store and gallery in the Water Street Market.
This serious painter stringently avoids minutiae – or getting lost in it, at least. By design, his work is extremely friendly to replication and repurposing across all the surfaces of the boutique Pop Art marketplace. Thus, the Cronin Art gallery will be non-traditional, a gallery as well as a shop featuring many varieties of affordable Croninized products and premiums, as well as the big canvases.
The frontman of the reunited area hardcore rock band Mearth, Cronin studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts and SUNY-New Paltz. He has shown widely in the area and at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the Brill Gallery in North Adams and at many galleries nationwide. His work has been featured on VH1 and at art fairs and festivals including All Tomorrow’s Parties. Recently he has collaborated on posters and tee-shirts for his friend the songwriter Rhett Miller, of Old ’97s fame.
The Ryan E. Cronin Gallery in Water Street Market opens on Saturday, June 27 at 12 noon. There will be musical performers and deejays, refreshments and other festivities well into the night. The Water Street Market is located at 10 Main Street in New Paltz. For more information and plentiful examples of Cronin’s work, visit www.cronartusa.com.
Ryan E. Cronin Gallery opening, Saturday, June 27, 12 noon, Water Street Market, 10 Main Street, New Paltz; www.cronartusa.com.
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