Two paintings from Eric Aho's current exhibition adeptly interpret his title "Occurrence." A large scale image titled New Year's Eve reinvents the memory and moment to a campfire in the woods. Aho affectionately scribbles in the side margins "New Year's Eve 2009/2010" (the latter, the year he executed the painting.) White and gray smoke rises in impasto swirls through the center of the painting from Aho's orange and yellow brushstrokes below, at the very bottom of the linen canvas. Stray sparks appear to fly from this painting's center in celebration that also evokes memories of a firework display. Nicole Reid from Tory Follliard Gallery also finds this painitng "fillled with movement and daring, equally impressive up close or from a distance."
Another painting titled Blasted Tree spreads brilliant light from a blue sky concentrated on a destructed tree, a sharply pointed stump hidden in the woods. Darker hues including charcoal grays contrast this white blast of light casting a double meaning to the title and the tree's current state that again accentuates the beauty that may be discovered even through devastating circumstances. The interview from Aho's lecture at Folliard's gallery for the opening continues his discussion on his painting, including a perceptive answer to how he views this light and shadow demonstrated through these paintings in his work.
What part and how does memory relate to the painting?
Let's say I'd like to paint a picnic. Yet, the painting didn't look like a picnic. It would be a beautiful occasion of colors, marks, shapes, light and temperatures. This painting looked like confetti and felt so real. This is so new that I'm learning about painting this new way that I'm discovering. It's about how it [the painting] feels, rather than looks. When I walk in front of it [the painting], I think about the picnic again and the experience more.
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And this new experience of memory and painting happens by?
Letting the painting lead. There are parameters to this… a palette, a general intention and its open and forgiving. I'm keeping myself open to these occurrences that happen to me. Be open to this next set of vocabulary to come in. As soon as the painting becomes something you expect, I lose interest in it, and then the viewer will. I usually paint one painting at a time, over the course of a week. Then each painting is for [holds] my entire attention, has my entire attention.
Could you speak to how you paint light in your paintings?
There are differences in light, your experience. When I was in Cuba, I have the memory of this exotic place, and intense hot light. The Finnish light is ancestral to me, and I am there three to seven time a year. A light unlike New England. Its starkness, crispness, well defined. The shadows are long and sharp. There's so much light in the summer it's hard to be outside. In New England, there's a warm, humid light that comes cascading through the trees. And in New Mexico I tried painting that light, but I couldn't and gave up and returned to what I could do.
Where do you get your inspiration from history?
Within the history of painting, these paintings have some relationship to an art historical thread. I respond to a Rembrandt painting. I respond to a Constable, Goya, Velasquez, Watteau, even as these events [the subjects the artists are painting] are placed in landscape. Why do some paintings live with me and effect me more than others? In Dublin, Ireland I was at the National Gallery and saw this Rembrandt. It made me think about some things in another way. It was perfect in quality and touch, and adhered itself to my entire being….even when only a small painting. This was TheRest on the Flight to Egypt. It was the silver moon [in the painting], the interior and exterior light, the cool/warm contrasts and establishing a full world between these contrasts.
(The Eric Aho exhibition continues at Tory Folliard Galley in the Historic Third Ward through December 31.)
