Poetic Puzzles opens on Friday, August 9th, with a reception from 7 to 9 pm and runs through August.
Poetic Puzzles, the upcoming exhibit at Bowersock Gallery, features Christopher Pothier and Catherine Nash, two artists known for presenting ideas and questions with open-ended answers.
One focuses on earthly human trials, the other on the serenity of the universe. One questions our psyche, while the other reflects on mystery. There's nothing ordinary about either artist’s work as their visions purposely remove us from our patterns and simultaneously move us outside ourselves, deep within.
Pothier (MFA University of Massachusetts, Amherst) has exhibited throughout the US and his large-scale commissioned murals can be found in businesses across the country. Chris’s representational oils explore human nature, and social constructs in unorthodox ways, sometimes with humor, more often with images that create quiet discomfort.
Pothier's latest series continues on that thread but with a bit of a twist: dreamlike narratives. He stated that he wanted to create images that aren’t necessarily based on real human emotion but appear more like slightly bizarre dreams, where figures, gravity, and perspective, are slightly off. Things happen in dreams where they can’t really be explained in any comprehensive way; not good or evil, just plain weird and Chris wants to capture that feeling.
Like any scrying tool, these works are the jumping-off point for interpretation with ourselves as the reference point: leading, mystifying, and beautiful. Pothier has also added to his popular, Cowboy Kid Series, with a single painting; the most recent speaks to hope. Chris has always been out of the box, creating perplexing canvases that appeal to and draw the viewer in. His incredible skill and wild imagination make it all work, even when he stands the world on its head!
Nash has a storied arts background. She earned her BFA in printmaking and drawing from the University of New Hampshire. After, she spent more than a year in Paris honing her skills. She returned to the US and graduated from the University of Arizona with a Master of Fine Arts in Mixed Media. Then she went on two independent trips to Japan to study the techniques of Japanese woodblock printing and paper-making followed by extensive research in Italy and Scandinavia.
Nash has produced four educational paper-making DVDs and published Authentic Visual Voices, a survey of international artists. She has earned numerous honors and is a teacher and sought-after lecturer. Today Nash practices numerous 2D and 3D techniques and freely mixes media to express her ideas. Her latest collection of mixed media assemblage reaches for the skies and deep into the wild to continue her narrative about our universe and the natural world.
Using saturated and warm hues, earthy woods, oils, encaustic, mica, and natural elements she evokes both a graceful and awe-inspiring world. Her work is rich, inviting, and always poetic; Bowersock (Owner/Curator of Bowersock Gallery) stated that he feels Catherine is an artist's artist with excellence in everything she puts her hand to. She’s someone who is always searching and experimenting, inspired by that deepest desire to express herself. This…will be an outstanding exhibit!
