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November Issue
2008
Somerhill Gallery in Durham, NC, Features
Works by John Beerman
Somerhill Gallery,
relocated in June 2008 to The Venable Center in Durham, NC, announces
a solo exhibition of recent works by John Beerman. Beerman's
oil paintings, monoprints, and etchings will be on display through
Nov. 14, 2008.
Born and raised in Greensboro, NC, Beerman now lives in and paints the Hudson River Valley in New York. He studied art at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine, and at Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned his BFA.
Beerman's primary focus is the landscape, whether it be upstate New York, piedmont North Carolina, or the southwest. John Coffey, curator of American and modern art and deputy director for art at the North Carolina Museum of Art stated, "John is clearly observing nature and translating it into a sort of hyperreality. Rather than simple reportage, John's landscapes communicate his response to the sensations he feels when he paints a scene."
Beerman's prints, like his paintings, are meticulously crafted landscape visions which capture the essence of time, place and space. Whether views of the Hudson River, the southwest, or the eastern seaboard, Beerman's subtleness is reminiscent of the luminist painters of the 19th century, yet thoroughly contemporary in spirit and point of view. In a New York Times article published Aug. 24, 2008, Beerman was quoted as seeing himself in the tradition of the Luminist offshoots of the Hudson River School. "They had a lot of sky, and subdued brushwork, so that the hand of the particular artist wasn't so obvious," said Beerman. "They had a quietude," he added. "Not so much drama."
Unlike his paintings, Beerman's works of art on paper are the result of a remarkable collaboration with Hudson River Editions, a collaboration both personal and professional. Hudson River Editions, a fine art press, was founded by master printer Sylvia Roth in 1981. Beerman began to work with Sylvia Roth in 1983 and his first Hudson River Editions were, appropriately, a series based on images of the Hudson River and surrounding landscape. Throughout their many collaborations, the color etchings and monoprints have gained in both virtuosity and technical complexity. The collaborations represent a symbiotic relationship, with Beerman challenging Roth's technical skill and her training him in new ways of layering color to build structure, depth and atmosphere.
Beerman's color etchings are complex undertakings, each requiring the printing of multiple plates on fine German etching paper. Broad bands of bright, often fluorescent and transparent inks are printed first, much in the way underpainting is built up on his canvases. The final aquatinted plates each carry parts of the image a tree, clouds, or rolling hill, for example and the colors become more subtle and muted. After the landscape has been printed, marbleized or gold leaf borders are added as an integral element in all of Beerman's work. The paper support, the framing elements, and the landscape image all interact to create prints which relate, though stand uniquely apart, from the painting.
Beerman's work is part of numerous public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina; and part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Beerman's paintings are also among the collection of the North Carolina Governor's mansion and the New York Governor's mansion. He has also been the recipient of many awards and commissions.
For further information check our NC Commercial
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 919/688-8868 or visit (www.somerhill.com).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2008 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.