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INTERNATIONALLY
RENOWNED ARTIST HUGH O'DONNELL TO EXHIBIT AT THE MORRISON
GALLERY, JUNE 23 - AUGUST 5, 2007 KENT, CONNECTICUT
Artist Hugh O'Donnell,
whose work is held in museums around the world from The Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York to
the Tate Gallery in London, opens a one-person show June
23rd at The Morrison Gallery in Kent,
his first major show in Connecticut. The
exhibition begins with a reception from 3 to 7 p.m.
Mr.
O'Donnell will display a series of large-scale oil paintings
and smaller paintings on wood at The Morrison Gallery, the
dramatic 7,000-square-foot exhibition space in the Kent Old
Barn area (8 Old Barn Road, near intersection of Routes 7
and 341). O'Donnell's work examines the ways in which impressions
of nature are recreated in art by creating symbolic forms
that
are a reflective, dynamic patterning of perceptions.
Respected art
historian Dore Ashton wrote of O'Donnell's painting, The
Things Of Light, "O'Donnell works
from the ground up, establishing levels in space with a flick
of the brush, a twist or a turn, or, as a mass of shadowy strokes
in mid-plane. His interest in transparency has always been apparent,
and in this painting, he firmly describes level upon level. We
can so to speak, look down to the bed of the stream through "the
plants floating along the water’s edge." Then,
there is his title, which directs us to one of the primary quests
of
all painters in oil: to transform the density of its material
existence into the supreme lightness of light itself. For painters,
light is the origin of both form and space. There is no talking
about form of space without it. In this painting, perfectly square
(a format that paradoxically suggests infinity to me) O'Donnell
celebrates a kind of light that is, in fact, available only in
painting, for it is obviously an analogy and not the thing itself
- an analogy that illumines the thing itself, so very abstract
in its very being."
The artist has been
exhibiting regularly since 1975 at many prestigious venues
including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in
New York City; The Royal Academy, London; The Walker Art Gallery
Minneapolis; The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Museum
of Modern Art in Japan; XLII Venice Biennale, Italy; Hirshhorn
Museum, Washington D.C. and the IV Medellin Biennial, Colombia.
Hugh O'Donnell's work
is held in many museum collections including The Addison Gallery
of American Art, Andover; The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Solomon R Guggenheim
Museum in New York City; Rose Art Museum Boston; Museum of Contemporary
Art, San Diego; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Yokohama
Museum of Art Japan; and the London Contemporary Arts Society,
The Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
ARTnews writer Ann Landi wrote in a recent
essay on Mr. O'Donnell's upcoming show at The Morrison Gallery: "Almost four decades
of personal history, and a vast and eclectic sweep of art history,
ebb and flow through O'Donnell's works, but there is a continuity
throughout, from his earliest interests in marrying inside and
outside to his more recent aspirations of wedding natural process
and imagery. This is O'Donnell's first major exhibition in Connecticut,
and because of the grand scope of the work, it is fitting that
this show should be staged in a grand space such as The Morrison
Gallery. The artist’s years in this part of New England
have brought a new synthesis to a body of painting that continues
to grow and engage the viewer with its invention and range."
As Director (1996-98) and Professor of Painting since 1996
at Boston University College of Fine Arts, School of Visual
Arts, Mr. O'Donnell's careers as a professional artist and
as a teacher have become intertwined. The two practices are
grounded in a study of nature, and in particular, growth dynamics.
The artist lives in Washington, Connecticut and Boston, Massachusetts.
