August 2019-December 2019
Various rotations of pieces throughout the shows duration.
Seen and Said
August 2019-October 2019
Initially SEEN AND SAID is a series of watercolor paintings and oil paintings with one line of my verse.
Each image is underscored with one line of my verse.
These paintings are about relationships.
They are about the intimate and complex relationships we have with:
ourselves
those we love
the places where we find ourselves
the seemingly randomness of the everyday things we find around us.
These ideas are abstractly expressed through a confluence of three separate visual voices and one verbal. They are like pieces of a puzzle with each segment suggesting a different aspect of the whole.
The Language of flowers
October 2019-December 2019
I am working with the concept of the language of flowers, and the use of the angel figure as a symbol for hope. Throughout time flowers have been used as symbols for specific emotions. Although the references are not exact, and many have a variety of meanings, I have chosen those that work well with certain human gestures and expressions. The angels are not meant to be a religious reference but as a symbol for the human spirit and its endless belief in the possible, in spite of the unprovable.
Martin John Garhart has worked as an artist/teacher, teaching, making, and showing his images over the last forty years. His works reside in over forty institutions including the British Museum, Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institute, as well as numerous private collections. He is a Professor of Art Emeritus from Kenyon College, in Gambier, OH where he taught Studio Art for thirty one years.
Having grown up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he has returned to the West and now splits his time between his cabin/studio in the Black Hills and his home/studio in Powell, WY
Artist Statement
At the most basic level, I am attempting to make interesting and beautiful things that asked to be considered.
We live our lives in a confluence of our physical and mental worlds, one informing the other. They are separate worlds, one sensing the experience of now, the other considering and conjuring the whole of it. Sometimes their focus is similar, often it is not. They exist and are brought together in the self. I am interested in making work that reference this phenomenon. Each image is a collection of separate parts, mental considerations, physical perceptions, and verbal expressions, that are brought together by context and often the structure of the frame. They are about the intimate and complex relationships we have with ourselves, those we love, the places where we find ourselves, and the seeming randomness of the everyday things we find around us. They are like a fractured mirror with each segment reflecting a different view of the whole. What is reflected is brought together in the viewing.
Technically the paintings are my exploration of visual, and to a lesser extent verbal, language. They are a consideration of how dialogue conveys meaning through formal structure and narrative content. I am attempting to expand my use of visual expression by making each painting an inquiry into the merger of traditional and contemporary visual vocabulary. I am working with the symbolic use of setting, time, and character, aesthetically gathered, to create content and beauty.