Jeffery Becton’s Montages at Courthouse Gallery and on National Tour

Ellsworth Courthouse Gallery is currently showing new work by Jeffery Becton through August 13, including several of his large-format digital montages. In addition, Becton’s over-sized montages are currently traveling in a national exhibition hosted by Bates College Museum of Art. The tour began at a solo exhibition at Bates in November 2015, and has since traveled to the University of Tennessee, the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Florida, and will open in Virginia at Lynchburg College on August 29.

“What I especially enjoy about Becton’s touch is that he doesn’t try to hide his Photoshop tracks (layers, cutout marks, filters – particularly Photoshop’s “watercolor” filter – etc.) just as many painters don’t try to hide their brushwork. . . . This is an important facet of Becton’s work: It is not simple conceptualism driven by one-dimensional wit. Becton follows his ideas with depth. . . . While the show includes a few (quite beautiful) black and white images, they underscore Becton’s broad palette. Moreover, with this exhibition, Becton makes the case that he is arguably the best colorist in Maine in any medium.” — Daniel Kany, Maine Sunday Telegram, 2016

“As in the work of surrealists like René Magritte (who, by the way, championed photomontage way before Adobe made it cool), things may not be what they seem in Becton’s work, but they still possess an unsettling, ambiguous familiarity. Erosion is a theme of both Becton’s art and his process: nature eroding the manmade, the digital eroding the physical—each one as implacable as the waves of the Atlantic lapping at Deer Isle’s shores.” — Grace-Yvette Gemmell, Down East, 2015

Inspired by the tidal reaches and atmospheric weather near his Deer Isle home and the summer homes on the Blue Hill Peninsula, Becton creates provocative photo-based digital montages, often playing with the borders between dream and reality, interior and exterior, abstraction and representation. His montages frequently contain architectural elements and objects from these vintage New England houses, many of which are part of his personal history.

Becton’s work has been in numerous solo, group, and juried exhibitions, featured in national and international publications, and is included in many private and museum collections, including Bates College of Art, Farnsworth Museum of Art, and Portland Museum of Art, among others. Becton’s work is also highlighted in “Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House” (Marshall Wilkes), a recent monograph by Carl Little. Signed copies of the book are available at Courthouse Gallery.

Courthouse Gallery is located at 6 Court Street in Ellsworth. Hours: Monday–Saturday 10am–5:30pm; Sunday 12–4pm. For more information on upcoming shows call 207-667-6611, or visit www.courthousegallery.com