Biennial Artist: Eric Aho
Run Time: 4:57
Eric Aho (United States, born 1966), Ice Cut (1931), 2008, oil on linen, 50 x 70 inches. Lent by the artist.
I discovered that landscape is an intervention between what is seen and what is painted. I use the terrain as my starting point for reference, content, and meaning, as well as for the simple pleasure of being outdoors. It is a hanger, of sorts, on which to drape new observations and curiosities unveiling endless possibilities. Until recently, most of my work has arisen from my local landscape in northern New England. But three years ago, I stepped away from my usual subjects and methods and began to rely on memory and invention in the studio. The subsequent paintings remained familiar yet the paint took on a new life, as if the actual seeing occured within the act of painting in the studio. They are my poetic interventions between that which is seen and that which is imagined.
By doing so, I recognize that paint transforms itself into something. The material itself evokes the quality of human flesh and the markings become something—a cloud, a hillside, or a sheet of ice—while simultaneously representing the opposite of those forms—the shadow of a cloud, an airy valley, or a deep hole through the ice. These passages evoke Wallace Stevens’ dictum from his poem “The Snow Man” which reverberates in my imagination while I paint: “Nothing that is not there and nothing that is.”