Peter Poskas: Capturing Light    Nov 5 - Dec 5, 2009

Spanierman Gallery, LLC is pleased to announce the opening on November 5, 2009 of Peter Poskas: Capturing Light, an exhibition and sale, featuring works by this eminent contemporary landscape painter. For over three decades, Poskas has been painting the rural farms of Connecticut and the sun-washed coasts of Maine. Closely observed and fastidiously recorded, his images are characterized by the subtlety of their light. While portraying different times of day, the light—even at dusk or sunset—is clear without being hard, soft yet not too hazy, varied but not overly dramatic, and usually a blend of warm and cool. This nuanced variability enables us to notice the lines, the arrangement of shapes, and the details in these paintings, and ultimately to be drawn into their moods. Such a contemplative experience is also the theme of Poskas’s art, as he seeks to record historically laden locales before they are irrevocably changed by progress as well as to capture the way they are being kept alive by those who have a loving respect for their preservation, while seeking to update them according to modern needs.

This exhibition includes thirty paintings in which we can enter into these quiet worlds. Many feature farms and houses, revealing Poskas’s firsthand knowledge of construction. He once built seven houses by himself, and his works show his awareness of how structures sit on the land, the proportions that give them stability, and the way their roofs overhang. We are drawn to the cornices and corners and to see how the parts fit together. These homes exude a sense of personality, reminding us that they shape us; we leave our mark on them and they on us, even after we have moved on. Poskas’s trees likewise reveal the artist’s expertise, the subtle but conscious variations in the branches and trunks reflecting his college studies in forestry.

Among the images are many that arouse familiar and strong feelings. In Spring Thaw (Cornwall, Connecticut) there is a self-protectiveness to a farmhouse, set beyond a road, yet a warmth of yellow light lingering in its walls suggests a guarded welcome. In Fog Lifting, Monhegan Harbor empty beach chairs at the edge of a waterway at low tide make us see this view both for itself and as something we must perceive as a scenic picture. In Front Porch, Johnson Farm (Woodbury, Connecticut) the covered porch looking outward, where an old rocking chair stands, calls to mind a time when lonely settlers desired a view of the road and its travelers, yet the trees and land are the only company now; experiencing a lonely place that calls for companionship elicits mixed sensations. In Prelude to Spring, New Milford, Connecticut, the red rectangle of a barn set high in the work, its color echoed in the freshly tracked new snow, has a friendly warmth that stirs up the feelings of comfort and stability we receive from seeing that such structures still stand and are in use. They seem to forestall the passage of time we all face. In September, Stonington, Maine, we feel a desire to look beyond the tops of the vacation houses to the sea, but the windows at the back of a home before us appear to stare at us surreptitiously with slitted eyes, causing us to feel a conflict between embracing near and perhaps uncomfortable contact and assuming a disengaged, aloof attitude.

As in the art of Andrew Wyeth, Poskas’s varied compositions and eye for abstract form, underscore the emotional expression of each scene. We can imagine ourselves in all of his paintings, which leave us with the choice as how we will move within them and respond to the multi-layered associations and feelings they evoke.