Edgewater Gallery’s two Middlebury locations will host the group show “Looking In, Looking Out: Two Galleries, Six Artists” this September. The show explores how man-made structures interact with the natural world. Edgewater Gallery on the Green will feature the work of painters Kathryn Milillo, Faye Mylen, and photographer Jim Westphalen. Stay tuned next week to read more about the other three artists exhibiting at Edgewater’s Gallery at Middlebury Falls.
Kathryn Milillo
Kathryn Milillo is a Vermont painter with a background in English literature and graphic design. Her clean and bold style is reminiscent of graphic design; her bright structures evoke an almost dream-like quality; together, it draws the viewer into her story.
“Words like ‘grace,’ ‘refuge’ and ‘abandonment’ are veins of gold to be mined,” the artist explained. “Playing with light and dark, color complements and negative spaces, I aim to create a visual poem.”
“Betwixt” by Kathryn Milillo, 12” x 19” – oil on canvas.
Milillo uses this visual language to convey her own joy of life and of the medium. She paints structural landscapes, especially farm architecture, and is always aware of the way in which elements relate and give off certain feelings to the viewer.
“I treasure the surprising moment when a painting resonates visually and metaphorically,” she said. “A barn becomes a church, a landscape a living body, two chairs a relationship.”
Faye Mylen
Connecticut oil painter Faye Mylen’s sophisticated style might fool you, but she’s only recently begun her journey as a professional artist. From her studies at home and abroad, Mylen brings abstraction into her representational work to create vibrant pieces that are energetic while simultaneously fading into an ethereal background.
In her colorful abstract paintings of the natural world, the artist emphasizes how her connection with the subject matter informs her process and the resulting image.
“While I paint, the work evokes certain emotions within me and these emotions appear on the canvas,” she explained. “The connection is also with the viewers, who will develop their own impression of the work, and I hope will feel emotions stirred within themselves. This is what I find the most thrilling, the connections that are formed, between others and within oneself. In this way, art can create a bond between many.”
Jim Westphalen
Largely self-taught, Vermont artist Jim Westphalen has been a professional photographer for over 30 years. His unusual technique and printing process bolsters the intrigue already surrounding his pieces. The artist uses a vintage film camera adapted for digital imagery and certain processing techniques that give his photographs a vivid and painterly feel, drawing in the viewer. Westphalen also employs the pigment printing process using acid-free rag papers in order to produce intense image stability.
With his subject matter, Westphalen seeks to capture the built landscape in rural places. He is interested in the intersection of humans and the natural environment, and how man-made structures are juxtaposed with nature. With his structural landscape photographs, often featuring barns, Westphalen captures a sense of nostalgia in the rapidly vanishing iconic architecture of rural America.
“I sense an urgency to capture their beauty in a way that celebrates not only what they once were, but what they have now become,” he said of the structures.
For more information call Edgewater Gallery on the Green at (802) 989-7419, email [email protected] or visit edgewatergallery-vt.com.