A big exhibition of 29 of my recent paintings will open at Well Street Art Gallery in Fairbanks this Friday, December 4, with a carefully controlled COVID-19-conscious reception from 5-8 p.m. The gallery requires all visitors to be masked, only allows a handful of viewers to be in the quite large spaces at one time, and visitors enter through a front door and exit through a rear door, both monitored by staff. I will be on hand, masked and socially distanced, to greet visitors and talk with them about my work.
This is my first local exhibition in several years, and none of these paintings have been exhibited in Fairbanks before now. Most of the works in the exhibition are from 2020, were completed during the pandemic and the social unrest which have gripped our nation and the world throughout this year, and I think were strongly influenced by this unprecedented time.
The paintings range in size from 8 x 10 inches to 4 x 5 feet, and many focus on the time between darkness and light, on the hours of twilight and dawn, on clear skies becoming occluded and on cloudy skies brightened by the sun.
Trees and the boreal forest feature prominently, of course, but in this exhibition there are more spruces than birches. Rushing water courses across some canvases. Leaves burst in May from bare branches, and some tumble to the ground, still green, before the onset of fall. The trunks of birches dream of summer through the long winter snows, and the bare crowns of aspens reach toward the sky for light in the very late fall and the very early spring.
I go to my studio each morning and go to work, and I never know what my paintings will be about until they are done. I sit and look at a finished canvas, ask myself, "Now what was that about?" and a title floats to mind. It always seems so clear, after the fact.
I have written briefly on this website about most of the paintings that are in the exhibition, but there are several new ones since the last post.
Leaning In ©Kesler Woodward 2020 36" x 36" Favorite ©Kesler Woodward 2020 20" x 10"
Leaning In is a reminder to myself and others that despite preoccupations with all sort of things in the wide world, I'll probably never quit painting birch portraits, and Favorite is the trunk of a tree I've long loved and have painted many times.
Scion ©Kesler Woodward 2020 20" x 10" Nightfall ©Kesler Woodward 2020 24" x 30"
Scion is a venerable white spruce in our neighborhood, towering over the lesser trees below the garden, and Nightfall features another impressive spruce, foregrounding the Tanana Valley and the peaks of the Alaska Range beyond.
If you are in Fairbanks in December, I hope you can make a trip to Well Street Art Gallery to see the exhibition, and if you're far from Interior Alaska, I hope you'll enjoy getting these glimpses of the show.
