Ron Donoughe brings the elements of classic landscape painting to his city environment, creating scenes of light and shadow, elevating the everyday.

Elevate the everyday.

That was the goal of the Ashcan School of thought when it came to painting in the early 20th century. The artistic movement sought to portray everyday moments in everyday lives, mostly in New York City and in the less affluent neighborhoods to boot.

Often working their way out of Philadelphia newspaper offices, where they worked as illustrators, some of the best examples of proponents of the Ashcan School worked to embody and promote the political upheaval of the times. Whether their work was political or apolitical, Ashcan painters wanted one thing: to take the everyday and make it worth of art, which up to then had been the domain of the high and mighty in genteel society.

Work created from the “ashcan” aesthetic tended to be both darker and rougher-hewn, depicting alleyways, unceremonious settings, and everyday events in the daily drama of place.

Ron Donoughe, whose work will make up half of the new exhibition opening at the Crary Gallery on Saturday, April 7, are his response to the ashcan aesthetic and his legacy of landscape paintings.

Donoughe said he’s been painting landscapes since he began as an artist and his goal, above all, is to convey the truth of a space. Part of that truth, he said, is what an area looks like in terms of light and dark, time of day, and season of the year. Regardless of the subject of any given painting, Donoughe said, all of his work is tied together through the common thread of theme: truthful observation.”

Donoughe works en plein aire, often painting “live,” directly from within the subject he’s attempting to catch. Even taking a photo of a place he’d like to capture, said Donoughe, takes away a bit of the spirit that first catches the eye of an artist. And painting the scene by standing within it is the only real way to get that spirit into the artist himself and, through him, onto the canvas. Donoughe absolutely believes that the best work comes from first-person observation.

His series, “Grit and Grace,” is a collection of paintings from around Pittsburgh, which has become his home as well as his subject at large. “Finding beauty where generally people don’t find it,” said Donoughe, is his daily mission. And his efforts to elevate the everyday in the neighborhoods where he lives and frequents is his opportunity to help people to become “more thoughtful about where we live,” and to see those small moments and measures of beauty in the everyday bridges, alleyways, backyards, and byways of the places they call home.

The way the morning light hits the side of a building, with a dark sky brooding in the background for instance, or the shadows of old-growth trees on the side of a row of homes in the afternoon autumn sun can be the images that imprint themselves on Donoughe, and that he says he needs to create. For him, landscape painting is not about creating a postcard. It’s about elevating a banal, everyday moment in time.

Ron will be offering a free painting demonstration at the Crary Gallery in Warren at 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 7.

The second artist being featured at the gallery’s upcoming opening is Rick Minard, whose woven paintings also explore the elements of light and shadow, but in their own way. Minard, who lives in Bradford, has fine arts degrees from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Clarion University, and Rochester Institute of Technology. He currently teaches drawing at Jamestown Community College and is an adjunct printmaking and painting professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

His woven paintings are what people know Minard for. He uses the medium of woven painting to explore the various parts of his subject, including interpersonal relationship, flaws, virtues, and the light and dark of human personality. And the pieces themselves, once re-incorporated in their final forms, bring a sense of cohesion to what had been chaotic. By weaving the light and dark of humanity into each of his painted figures, Minard seeks to explore how our fears and weaknesses, as well as our strengths and hopes. come together to create the unique individuals we all come to be, and the human effort to combine the two in the best way possible.

“Grit and Grace” and “Light and Shadow” will open on Saturday, April 7 at the Crary Gallery on Market Street in Warren. The opening reception will begin at 6 p.m., with gallery talks beginning at 7 p.m. Also, Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. Ron Donoughe will be demonstrating his process at the gallery starting at 2 p.m., and the demonstration will be offered rain or shine. The opening reception will close at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 7, with the show running until May 7.

Gallery hours during exhibitions are Thursdays from noon to 6 p.m., Fridays from noon to 8 p.m., Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. As always, the gallery is free and open to the public. Learn more about the gallery by visiting www.craryartgallery.org.