Dowling Walsh Gallery will host three exhibitions in the month of October for Tollef Runquist, Sarah McRae Morton, and Reggie Burrows Hodges
Opening Friday, October 4th from 5-8pm in conjunction with Rockland First Friday Art Walk.
Tollef Runquist
Tollef Runquist received his B.A. in Studio Art from Dickinson College in 2002. Since then he has been continuing his education through painting and other mediums. He lives and works in Searsport, Maine. He has had solo exhibitions at Taylor Gallery, Meriden, NH; Ober Gallery, Kent, CT; and OK Harris, New York, NY; among others. Runquist looks at a wide range of artists as inspiration including Richard Diebenkorn, Monet, De Kooning, Gauguin, Bonnard, Rothko, Sargent, Gordon Grant, Gerhard Richter, Hopper, Homer, Klimt and Egon Schiele.
Runquist states, “Painting for me is an undertaking of appreciation and inquiry. It is a means by which to engage the beauty and mystery of visual experience in an ongoing dialogue. This is a widening puzzle; as I partake in this conversation, it continually refreshes itself, revealing unexpected angles and new understanding. I feel no particular loyalty to realism or my own past work. I set to draw out a particular vision as long as my experience with it is visceral, attentive and useful. I try to encapsulate the fullness of my experience of a moment; weight and stillness, burning edges, massive calm. These move me towards a particular subject, I try to paint and honor them, and then move on.”
Sarah McRae Morton
Sarah McRae Morton grew up in rural Lancaster County Pennsylvania, where she still keeps a hayloft studio above the horse stalls in her family’s barn. Sarah attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. She has studied chemical composition of paintings in Rome as well as studied with Odd Nerdrum in Norway. Sarah received a Mattisse Foundation fellowship for her work on the local history of West Virginia, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited across the country, including at the Vermont Studio Center. She currently lives and paints in Cologne, Germany.
Sarah McRae Morton’s paintings are invented portraits of her ancestors and historical figures – people from her own life, from books and paintings, and from her travels and stories learned. The events and people illustrated are not bound by time or fact, but are imbued with ghosts and artifacts from cross sections of history. Sarah’s work is wildly romantic, with an earthy palate and energetic movement around the canvas that quiets on key moments – detailed renderings of the face of a bear, the lips of a lover, the fox stole around a poet’s neck. The paintings seem to flicker to life with her spirited brush strokes.
Reggie Burrows Hodges
Reggie Burrows Hodges is a narrative figurative painter whose work centers around visual metaphor and storytelling. He works primarily large-scale on raw canvas, wood and rag paper with acrylic and pastel — exploring themes such as identity, truth, surveillance, and often childhood memories. As method, Hodges paints from a black ground, developing the environment around the figure so it emerges from its surroundings, examining the possibility that we are all products of our environment.
Hodges attended the University of Kansas studying theatre and film. He is currently an adjunct professor at the Maine College of Art teaching Cinematic Storytelling, Character Design and Professional Studio Development in Animation and Game Arts. Hodges has been the recipient of numerous artist residencies including the Ellis- Beauregard Foundation, Stephen Pace House and Monson Arts.
Dowling Walsh Gallery is located at 365 Main Street in Rockland, Maine, directly across from the Farnsworth Art Museum. Gallery Hours, Tuesday through Saturday from 10am – 5pm, and by appointment on Sunday and Monday.
For more information, visit us online at www.dowlingwalsh.com or call 207-596-0084
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