Maria Hajic
Director
505 954 5719
mhajic@gpgallery.com
The Gerald Peters Gallery is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition, Tony Angell and Thomas Quinn: A Conversation with Nature. Fueled in part by their 26 year old friendship, these artists share a life-long artistic fascination and reverence for Nature.
The Gerald Peters Gallery is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition, Tony Angell and Thomas Quinn: A Conversation with Nature. Fueled in part by their 26 year old friendship, these artists share a life-long artistic fascination and reverence for Nature. The exhibition will be available to view online and in person.
Minimal in detail yet powerful in form, these paintings and sculptures are a celebration of the immeasurable complexity and compelling beauty of our natural world. Throughout their long friendship, Angell and Quinn have encouraged and inspired each other to create works of art that revive and deepen our appreciation of the wildlife and wild places that feed our soul.
Strength and elegance characterize the sculpture of Tony Angell. In stone and bronze, Angell reveals forms and behavior that express the power, energy and grace of wildlife in the Pacific Northwest. His sculptures encourage the viewer to explore each work from a variety of angles and points of view.
My life has been immeasurably enriched by having an artistic association with Nature. There is the compelling beauty of the form, patterns and movement of the wild subjects that demand attention and generate awe. It is my intent to render some attention and permanence to moments in Nature that are becoming less and less frequent in a world dominated by human motives and indifference. I am compelled to give voice to a reverence I hold for these subjects that words alone cannot convey. – Tony Angell
From his studio in Point Reyes, California, Thomas Quinn paints wildlife with an economy of style uniquely his own. In translucent watercolor, Quinn captures the elusive quality of a bird of prey or mammal in repose. With a minimum of brushwork and deceptively simple compositions, Quinn captures all the detail needed, the coloration, posture and form of his wild and ephemeral subjects.
To me, painting, veracity, and Nature are still about what is represented but also about what is implied or left unsaid. In representational animal art, these open areas may imply a place, habitat, or landscape, where by whim, necessity, or imagination a creature might choose to move or escape. As magical spaces, these places may hold more than just relief and understatement-perhaps there’s a hidden geometry, silence, vulnerability, or solitude; maybe it’s a place of nonsense, departure, enigma, mystery, or promise where nothingness is the value most desired. – Thomas Quinn
Many years ago my young daughter Gavia and I would ride a bicycle along the dyke that borders Padilla Bay in the Salish Sea. On one occasion we stopped to watch a northern shrike perched atop a cluster of wild rose across a slough. To our surprise the bird flew directly toward us and seized a meadow vole we had disturbed near the bike. The bird flew back with its catch to its thorny perch and secured its prey amid some of the insects it had caught during its residency
Tony Angell
In winter owls will perch at dusk at the edges of our local forests. Their distinguished silhouettes stand out against a background of bare limbs and a tangle of branches. Their haunting calls proclaim the boundaries of their territories and their presence is a sign of the woodlands’ vitality.
Tony Angell
All owls can fix you with their large eyes set in a broad face but the saw - whet's inquisitive postures are quite singular
Tony Angell
When on our island the intense chortling and croaking of ravens is a common sound. Hearing several of them one day I went out to discover the focus of their vocal exchanges and sought to enter the conversation with an imitation of their greeting call. No luck there as one of the birds turned in my direction leaned over its perch and produced and angry growl before all the birds flew off. I took that to be a scold and an expression of resentment over my intrusion.
Tony Angell
In a saltwater a short walking distance of my studio I can watch land otters diving for morning meals. When successful they ascend the top of a convenient rock where they momentarily pin their catch on its surface before feeding. Their still wet bodies appear sleek and taut.
Tony Angell
Along many of the bays on our island, kingfishers have established residency. Here they patrol the shoreline to maintain their property rights including their food sources and nesting bluffs.
Tony Angell
This piece was first imagined in the conversation I had with the stone I carved it in. The material was round and there were suggestions of a pair of young foxes curled up and together. The social needs of such species is not unlike ours when it comes to keeping company with family were we can be warm and secure.
Tony Angell
An eagle studies an eddy in fast dark waters.
Thomas Quinn
Berries bitten from frost ferment. Gorgeous waxwings gorge. Some are happy, some are drunk.
Thomas Quinn
Coyotes sing in the burnt forest smoke yips of protest, wails of lament.
Thomas Quinn
I wasn’t near her when she tilted away, slicing down on the dawdling coots. But I imagined I was.
Thomas Quinn
A great nightbird lifts something of value, heavenward.
Thomas Quinn
The footfalls of a traveling wolf are rhythmic thuds. May they go on forever.
Thomas Quinn
Smugly the otter travels himself onto a creek bank to groom his enviable coat.