An expectant crowd filled Tory Folliard Gallery for the Saturday exhibition opening “Eric Aho: Occurrence” in November, when the entire gallery radiated with Aho's oil on linen paintings, in diminutive and large images, that aesthetically reveal a dramatic memory and specific moment in time. The New England born Aho now resides in Southern Vermont, and Folliard brought Aho to Milwaukee for the Saturday opening and gallery talk. The format relied on a short discussion with a question and answer period afterwards to the delight of those listening. As he talked that afternoon, more than a few insightful thoughts about art and painting were gleaned from Aho's astute attention and revelations regarding his profession for those admiring the art, or as artists and painters themselves.
How has your work changed over the 12 years and 5 solo shows you've been with Tory Folliard Gallery, the time when you've been exhibiting in Milwaukee?
This show represents a change for my work, the before and after. There are some pastoral views, and I have done them for a while and found I was no longer really looking at the landscape, looking with as much scrutiny as I had before. I wanted to experience the scene unfolding in front of me [put it] on canvas, experimentally.
How did this practically change your work schedule?
I usually sit in the woods, plein air, and then intentionally not look on the landscape. I want to rely on that initial impulse, the things that catch my eye%u23AFthe light on the edge of the tree or the crystalline quality of the sky. I want to be physically responsive to the landscape or environment. I have two small children now so that has changed my working habits, my painting as well.
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How does this happen?
This gradual shift in the household from two to four, so this means I'm working a different times. A sunset light is now dinnertime, so I'm working more, finishing more at night.
Did you intentionally set out to change your paintings?
I didn't set out to change my painting, anything, I only noticed my eye was behaving differently. So I try to keep myself out of the paintings, so the paintings will be giving me my cues and clues, how to move the painting along. Then I started with my Fireand Ice Series, the breaking up of the river, that I exhibited last time, the ice. Then I worked with the fire paintings, which allowed me to use other colors and another palette…reds and oranges. I was behaving like a farmer, clearing the idea of landscape to make room for another [another way of painting].
What happened next?
I became interested in the idea of an object's physical property…away from the actual object, but how it exists in memory. How does that memory exist physically? Painting is a tool for establishing that physicality, creating a equivalent of this [of the memory] in the real world. It becomes an accumulation of my experiences over the 20 years I have been painting. I can conjure at will some of these landscapes [I have looked at and have painted] so I am relying on memory more and more so it's [the painting] not as refined. The way you remember things is quite scattered.
