Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Bill Brauer & Margit J. Füreder

There are two women in Vermont artist Bill Brauer’s painting “Art Lovers”: a young girl furtively kissing a shadowy figure in a doorway; and a demure onlooker, her face tilted down, who appears in a painting within the painting. Brauer’s new series, called “The Observer,” is perfectly paired at West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park in Stowe with the work of Austrian artist Margit J. Füreder, who offers a different perspective of the female form. In her collection “Queen of Heart,” she positions powerful, sexualized women in lush, cinematic landscapes overlaid with fragmented text. Her process, which includes overlapping painted versions of digitally altered photos with her own repurposed abstract paintings, creates a sense of “deliberate estrangement,” she writes. From July 7 through August 15. Pictured: “Strong and Independent” by Füreder.