Wednesday, October 29, 2014

One more weekend for HARBOR @ Matteawan Gallery

My exhibit HARBOR is entering its final week at Matteawan Gallery here in Beacon.  The show will close on November 2.
Harbor features selections from two threads of work that come directly from my 2012 trip to Geneva, Switzerland, the Harbor paintings and Crests.

The Poughkeepsie Journal ran a Q&A with me in its Enjoy! section last week.  You can check that out HERE for a limited time.

The Harbor paintings and the Crests both embody structures of cradle and structures of capture. 

The title of the show refers more to the verb form of the word Harbor than the noun, even as the compositional nature of the Harbor paintings were born from a reading of the harbor where Lac Leman comes to an end at Geneva.

The works here mine the elements of those things we hold on us and of those things that maintain a hold on us.  Both groups of works emerged from the ebbing reflection of sights and experiences on my short residency in Geneva.  

Harbor paintings
l-r: bell/e, Onyx, brace
That the Crest paintings also adhere to this act of harboring only occurred to me as I was finalizing preparations for the show. These heraldic shield forms are devoid of a central heraldic imagery. What imagery there is in the field of the shield is either incidental or marginal. Although this changed in a few of my experiments with this group - Onyx is such an example, the heart of this work is essentially a void framed within an old and loaded form. The unstated elements resting outside of the shield's perimeter are equally important, if not more than those inside the lightly indicated field of the shield. Those external, concealed elements have the potential to arrest the mind's attention, harboring an assurance that there is indeed something more to what little is visible.
l-r: Emblem(posterior), Emblem

The Harbor paintings are a fixed group of 15 works (2 are still in the works) all 20" x16", oil on canvas mounted on linen covered panels:
H10
H11
H3
H4
H8
H12
H5
H7 (love, dead)
H6 (vein)
H1
H9
H14
The Crest works:
Lolita, oil on panel
bell/e, watercolor
brace, watercolor
gaze, watercolor
Onyx, acrylic on paper

Lastly, I created a "trailer" for the exhibit which you can view HERE.