Painting the Catskills Exhibit Opening Reception August 29th
July 28, 2015: Painting the Catskills will be on display at the Erpf Gallery August 29th through October 16, 2015, and will feature the Catskill landscape paintings of husband and wife painters Michael Herstand and Kamilla Talbot. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, August 29, from 2-4 PM, at the Erpf Center in Arkville.
Kamilla Talbot and Michael Herstand split their time between the Catskills and Brooklyn. Six years ago they bought an old farmhouse and barn in Harpersfield, in Delaware County, and have been inspired by the lush farmland surrounding them. Often working side-by-side, they influence and work off of each other.
Michael Herstand’s direct observation of nature is the force that drives his work. Foremost it is shape that interests him - the shapes of rocks, or an expanse of sky as it interlocks with the horizon. The process of transferring those shapes and forms to the proportion of the canvas elevates the design, or composition, to an important role. This two-dimensional “surface geometry” also projects into the perceived space of the canvas to create form. All the while he feels the rhythm, changing light and movement in the landscape.
Kamilla Talbot’s paintings explore painterly invention and particularity of place. Painting intuitively constructed landscapes; she searches for a metaphoric, poetic presence, rather than a literal representation of nature. In Ms. Talbot’s paintings, she has developed a vocabulary of flatness and abstraction which co-exists with the depiction of a perceived, representational space.
Michael Herstand received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from the University of Iowa in 1984. He then worked for several years as an etcher and lithographer at three of the top full service fine art printmaking workshops in the United States: Vermillion Editions, TylerGraphics and Spring Street Workshop (Pace Editions). He makes paintings, prints and sculptures in his studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn and Upstate New York. He has exhibited his work in numerous group shows, most recently in a two-person show with his wife Kamilla Talbot in Flensborg, Germany in 2012. Other group shows include Behr-Thyssen Fine Arts, New York, in April, 2008. Twelve of his woodcuts were hung in a show of prints at Hoftsra University, Long Island, New York, in February, 2009. In the summer of 2007 he and Kamilla Talbot exhibited their work in two concurrent shows in Denmark: at The Johannes Larsen Museum and at Galleri Varming in Copenhagen. Group shows include “Particular Places,” juried by Bernard Chaet, at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven,CT; The Small Works Show at Grey Gallery, New York University; Brian Lynch Studio, 47th Street, New York; and the Spoke the Hub Re-Creation Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Kamilla Talbot studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the New York Studio School. She has taught at the Art Students League and the New York Studio School, and currently teaches at the National Academy. Her paintings have been show at numerous galleries in New York, including Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Lohin Geduld Gallery, Kouros Gallery, Gallery North, the Painting Center, and the Bowery Gallery. She has had solo shows at Bruno Marina Gallery in Brooklyn and at the Johannes Larsen Museum in Denmark. She is currently the artist in residence for the National Park Service, on Governors Island. Other residencies include the Heliker-LaHotan Residency, Maine; the Vermont Studio Center; the World Trade Center residency; as well as residencies in Newfoundland and Iceland.
Painting the Catskills is on display through October 16. For more information, contact the Catskill Center at 845-586-2611, kpalm@catskillcenter.org, or visit www.catskillcenter.org.