PEA's Lamont Gallery presents Contrary Elements: Works by Meredith Knapp Brickell and Stuart Ober

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Thursday, March 3, 2011

Painting by artist Stuart Ober entitled Salt Marsh With Island - courtesy of Stuart Ober

Exeter, NH (January 27, 2011)—From Wednesday, February 2 to Thursday, March 3, the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy will present "Contrary Elements," an exhibition of oil paintings and ceramics by artists Meredith Knapp Brickell and Stuart Ober. An opening reception will be held on Friday, February 4, 6:30-8 p.m., and a gallery talk is scheduled for Saturday, February 5 at 10 a.m. The Lamont Gallery is in the Frederick R. Mayer Art Center on Tan Lane. All events are free and open to the public.
 
An artist who practices a self-taught interpretation of representational painting, Ober describes his work over the last 30 years as "dealing with everyday life and objects in a way that searches for an intersection with the sometimes uneasy world of emotion." He combines "a deadpan illusionism with a not quite fathomable psychic undertone."

Ober realized his fascination in oil paint while a senior math major at Tufts University. Graduating in 1970 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, he began his career-long exploration as an artist. Since 1995, Ober has taught oil painting at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. His works have been exhibited at Gallery NAGA, Boston, MA; the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA; the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH; and the Tyler Gallery, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

"All my paintings begin with a strong emotional reaction to an object, a situation, or a media image, or a juxtaposition of commonplace objects seen for an instant while walking through a room," Ober says. "This emotional response to the ordinary in life provides the energy to translate an image into a painting. This emotional reaction can center on the inner glow of fully saturated color, on the soft diagonal and horizontal lines of open marsh, on the shape of sunlight through a window at a certain point in the day. The emotion is what will sustain my concentration as I paint, and, in the end, what I want the observer to sense when looking at the painting where it hangs on the gallery wall."

Ceramic art from the installation Tanks, created by artist Meredith Knapp Brickell - courtesy of Meredith Knapp Brickell

Describing herself as "sensitive to her surroundings," Brickell says that observation of place has been the consistent element in her art. After growing up on a farm in New Jersey and attending college amid Nebraska prairie land, she found her perspective changing when she relocated to a studio in downtown Raleigh, NC. The industrial neighborhood offered new energies. "The urban landscape has been a new source of inspiration, even though it is a very different aesthetic," Brickell says. "For a long time, I was interested in beautiful, isolated, rural spaces. But [now] I am increasingly interested in the complexity of imperfect landscapes … I appreciate the many interconnected layers that make up these places—people, architecture, urban planning, abandoned sites."

In ceramic and mixed-media sculpture, Brickell's experience of place is conveyed in deeply-rooted and instinctive ways through minimal form, subtle lines and color. In Brickell's series Tanks, she describes it as a "simple arrangement of rustic vessels elevated on scaffolding," which is often associated with pools of deep, still water and sensations of floating. Another installation piece, Bones, is a collection of objects referring to the realm of the handheld—toys, tools, trinkets—the things carried from place to place. The arrangement follows the process of sorting through personal objects after a death. The ceramic forms represent the memory of an object rather than the actual object itself, consequently allowing the ambiguous forms to exist in a murky place between the familiar and unfamiliar.

Brickell received a bachelor's degree from North Carolina State University, a master's degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and studied at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC. Her recent solo exhibitions include the Philadelphia Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA, and Dubhe Carreño Gallery, Chicago, IL. In 2008, Brickell was awarded the silver prize for her piece Gather in the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale. She teaches art and art history at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN.

Gallery hours during the school year are: Monday 1-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; closed Sundays and school holidays. For more information, contact the Lamont Gallery at 603-777-3461. For directions to Phillips Exeter Academy, call 603-777-4330. A complete list of upcoming events is available on the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at 603-777-4309; or visit the Academy's community calendar or website.