THREE VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY ART - BETWEEN IMAGE AND IDEA

Three Treasure Coast artists with distinctly different approaches to painting come together in Three Voices in Contemporary Art — Between Image and Idea, opening November 5 at the MIDFLORIDA Event Center Art Gallery in Port St. Lucie.

Featuring approximately 45 paintings by José Farinós, Linda Reymore and Mickey Rudolph, the exhibition moves from contemporary figuration to geometric abstraction and coastal impressionism, placing three independent visual languages in conversation rather than presenting a shared style.

Together, the artists offer three different answers to a fundamental question: What makes us continue looking?

For Farinós, the answer often begins with something recognizable. His paintings bring figures, objects and signs together in unexpected relationships. Bold color and expressive imagery make the compositions immediately accessible, but humor can give way to tension, ambiguity and contradiction.

Farinós describes his approach as “seriously whimsical,” a phrase that captures the balance between playfulness and complexity in his work.

“I begin with images people recognize, but I like to place them in relationships that are not quite what the viewer expects,” Farinós said. “The humor may draw someone into a painting, but beneath it there is often ambiguity, contradiction or something a little unsettling.”

While Farinós uses recognizable imagery to open the door to interpretation, Reymore begins with relationships among form, edge and space.

A contemporary geometric abstract artist, Reymore extends composition beyond the boundaries of a single canvas. In her newest body of work, Perimetric Systems, separate painted canvas units operate as individual paintings and as parts of larger visual systems. Lines and shapes establish relationships across the intervals between units, making the surrounding wall an active part of the composition.

Some systems can be installed in more than one configuration, changing the relationships among the units, their forms, edges and open spaces—and potentially changing the viewer’s perception of where the artwork begins and ends.

“I’m interested in what happens when the edge no longer simply contains the painting,” Reymore said. “The intervals between the canvas units and the surrounding wall become part of the visual experience. The work can be structurally resolved while remaining open to discovery.”

For Rudolph, looking is inseparable from remembering. He spent his early years on Long Beach Island along New York’s South Shore. His later service in the U.S. Coast Guard, extensive travel and lifelong involvement with boating and fishing deepened his connection to the sea.

His artistic education began at home. Rudolph’s late mother studied at Parsons and the Sorbonne and worked as an architect, engraver and professional artist. She surrounded him with art books, instruction and an almost inexhaustible supply of paints and pencils.

“I was a fish in water,” Rudolph said. “Now, decades later, as I paint, I still hear her voice.”

His paintings combine modern impressionism with elements of illustration. Boats, shorelines, reflected light and changing weather are shaped by personal observation and memory, while leaving room for viewers to bring their own associations to the scenes. His work has also been acquired by collectors with a particular interest in coastal art.

Seen together, the three bodies of work reveal how differently artists can respond to the world around them. Farinós rearranges recognizable imagery to create ambiguity. Reymore allows form, perimeter and interval to carry the experience. Rudolph transforms observed places through memory and atmosphere.

Three Voices in Contemporary Art — Between Image and Idea opens with a public reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, November 5, at the MIDFLORIDA Event Center Art Gallery, 9221 Event Center Place, Port St. Lucie. The exhibition continues through January 6, 2027. Gallery hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

For gallery information, visit midfloridaeventcenter.com or call 772-807-4488.