Camden Falls Gallery opened its season with the exhibit “Homecoming 2020,” a virtual presentation with interviews and videos by and about house artists Ann Trainor Domingue and Ryan Kohler.
Camden Falls also welcomes a new artist to its gallery, Tom Glover.
The works of these three artists show the importance of time, place and the stories that keep us grounded in this uprooted season of our lives. Their ability to break down, investigate, create and rearrange the reality of what they see with their eyes and transpose it onto canvas is an impressive feat. The results of their work are fresh, audacious, bold and striking.
Ann Trainor Domingue is a New Englander. Originally from Massachusetts, she eventually found herself settling in New Hampshire. The theme of our opening show, “Homecoming,” brings about her own reflections of what “home” means. For her, “home” is about, “taking the time to go back to where the places and people remind you of times gone by — happy and sad, crazy and quiet, joyful or sentimental.” These reflections are transformed into fanciful, mythological images that retell stories visually familiar to all of us. The fisherman and his counterpart as subjects visually mirror the vocabulary deeply rooted in New England imagery of the sea.
Viewing her work is a fascinating experience of unfolding stories, which she has consciously or unconsciously packed into a single image. The layers and textures are jewels for the eyes, as we consider, ponder and work out the story being told.
Armed with a dedication to painting and an eclectic vision, Ryan Kohler is a popular emerging artist from Skowhegan. Per Kohler, “I am interested in the formal aspects of representational painting … but focus mostly on finding abstract yet implicit shapes and trying to find ways to simplify my subjects.”
It is this eclecticism and simplification of his subject matter that makes his work so visually fresh, vibrant and dynamic. Through its graphic quality and subtle references, Kohler’s work appears to be a modern twist on pop art.
Form and contour drives his work. The heavy impasto of the paint imbues his work with depth and warmly welcomes viewers to partake and experience the broad, colorfield-like spaces.
Based in New Hampshire, Tom Glover is an artist who is teeming with ideas and stories. According to Glover, it is the dichotomy between abstraction and realism that works to “keep one’s eye fresh and one’s mind flexing, adjusting, adapting and, frankly, delighted.”
Glover’s goal to ignite an immediate sense of place or memory in viewers is similar to the science-fiction qualities of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing.
Camden Falls Gallery is at 5 Public Landing, Camden. See http://www.camdenfallsgallery.com for more information.
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