Elizabeth Johnson: Jeffrey Carr said of your work: "Art doesn't have to confound beauty, or fight with it, or compete with its naturally occurring presence. Beauty can be left as is." Does this ring true to you? If so, how do you find your groove that allows technique to reflect rather than overpower or undermine found beauty?
Frank Trefny: Yes, I agree with Jeff’s statement. But while everyone may share some concepts of beauty, it is subjective. One thing that makes something beautiful to me is that it looks paintable. That doesn’t mean necessarily that it looks easy to paint, but that it seems to call forth a painterly response. That feeling makes it “beautiful” in my mind. Ivan Albright saw the ugly in everything and made “beautiful” interesting paintings. I, on the other hand, often favor rather traditional beautiful subjects because they inspire me. I never find them boring...
“To me, a field is always shifting, evolving, changing. It is a complex ecosystem. I try to make sense of it, search for patterns to bring out objects, frame them with space that surrounds them. It becomes a meditative state that is romantic at its core. I am searching for the relationship between humans and their always-changing environment.”
-Douglas Martenson
In Resilience, Douglas Martenson delivers a captivating new body of landscape paintings that, while exuding beauty, challenge viewers to contemplate the fragility of our sensitive ecosystems.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
