COVE IMG Linear Flux x Strappos on Board Strappo
“Linear Flux”

Cove Street is honored to present a virtual exhibition of work by Harold Garde (June 7, 1923 to Oct. 11, 2022), featuring a focused selection of his strappos alongside examples from a career that spanned seven decades and made a significant, if often under-recognized contribution to Post-War American art. All works featured in the virtual exhibition are onsite and available for viewing in the gallery at any time, with a larger selection of strappos and works in other media available by appointment.

Garde’s practice sits in conversation with the long arc of modern art, drawing on intuition, improvisation and a deep understanding of color and form shaped by a lifetime of looking and making. As Ken Greenleaf writes in “Harold Garde and the Painted Essence: Expression and Intention,” encountering a Garde painting is to encounter a lineage that includes Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and the push-pull of modernist color, all filtered through a distinctly personal, welcoming sensibility. “There has to be someone who will say to us, Here is what you may love; love it. And then we love,” Marcel Proust wrote of Monet, a sentiment that resonates strongly in Garde’s work.

Central to this exhibition is Garde’s Strappo process, named after a conservatorial technique used to lift paint from frescoes. Garde adapted this idea by applying acrylic paint to glass, then transferring it onto another surface, combining the controlled mechanics of printing with a painterly, improvisational hand. Works such as “Linear Flux” and “Dialog” demonstrate how repeated lines, implied figures and subtle narrative suggestions emerge from this process without resolving into fixed stories, leaving space for viewers to bring their own interpretations.

Throughout his career, Garde embraced chance as a structural element, allowing accidents to become integral to the image. Whether suggesting figures, vessels or garments, as in works like “Torso of a Modest Person” or “Kimono with Tea Stained Wall,” his paintings often play with misdirection, blurring distinctions between object and abstraction, intention and surprise. The result is a body of work that feels both formally grounded and quietly playful.

Rather than a chronological retrospective, this exhibition reflects the way Garde worked throughout his life: beginning with fundamental ideas and letting dialogue, intuition and response shape the outcome. Even late in life, Garde continued to work actively, and this presentation offers a fitting glimpse into an expansive practice defined by curiosity, discipline and an enduring openness to discovery.

An exhibition video and artist talk video are available to view online, along with a published review.

Cove Street Arts is at 71 Cove St., Portland. Call 207-808-8911, email info@covestreetarts.com, or go to www.covestreetarts.com for more information.