Blythe King: Time Beings

Opening Reception

Friday, May 3, 7-9 pm

Artist Talk

Saturday, May 18, 2-4 pm

Blythe King's statement for Time Beings

I'm starting to see my collages as visual diagrams of Zen meditation. My work shows activity within an expansive field. The portraits visualize thinking in the midst of our originally radiant, naturally awakened mind.

Fragments disperse, float, and orbit around luminous circles made of gold-leafed magazine and comic book clippings. My women break the spell of advertising by shattering its very words. Through a process of reordering, new relevance is revealed.

Prajnaparamita, often depicted as a woman in Buddhist art, similarly dispels delusion through the perfection of wisdom, which simultaneously sees all things as independent and interdependent.

Our illusion of time is also broken. Images from the past (c. 1940-80) become present, and our separation from time falls away. For the time being means for now, the present moment. Zazen is a practice of being present. In our experience of the world, time is never past or future. Time is now. Time is being.

 

Artist Bio

Blythe King leads a diversified life in the arts. She works as an educator, mentor, collaborator, program director, and practicing artist. Blythe’s collage work has exhibited regularly in Virginia through the Richmond Public Library, Eric Schindler Gallery, and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also been showcased by the The Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts and the Hillyer in Washington DC. Most recently, she was awarded a 2022-23 Artist Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. In 2021, Blythe launched Open Space Education in response to the growing need for equitable access to nature, art education, and alternative modes of learning for young people in Richmond.

Blythe’s academic background combines an MA in Buddhism and Art from the University of Colorado, with undergraduate studies in Japanese religion and art at the University of Richmond. She currently serves as Vice President on the board of Richmond Zen.

Exhibition runs through June 14, 2024.

Julie Elkins: Resonance

OPENING RECEPTION

Thursday, March 21, 2024, 5:30-9 pm

Reflecting on Two Decades of Artistry: Julie Elkins' Resonance, A 20-Year Retrospective.

Week of NCECA (March 19-23) special hours:
Tues 12 - 5 pm
Wed 10 am - 5 pm
Thurs - Sat 12 - 5 pm
Art Opening Reception: March 21, 5:30-9pm

We are looking forward to participating in this national event! 

Resonance will be on display through April 6, 2024.

Vanishing Point: New Work by David Rohrer

Opening Reception

Friday, February 2, 7-9 pm

Artist Statement

I paint what I know. I know the edge a pallet knife creates on a brushed background; the warmth of yellow ochre against a cool violet; and the luscious thickness of wet oil paint. In order for these elements to make sense to me, I need a jumping of point based in the reality of my personal experience.

I have taken inspiration from the people and places that I encounter day to day. They are an endless well to draw all of my explorations of form, color, light, and emotion from. While I do paint figures, I get most of my inspiration from urban landscapes. By diminishing the importance of the figure, the buildings, streets, and rhythmic telephone poles take on the role as the protagonists in my vignettes.

Exhibition runs through March 9, 2024.

Settings: Paintings, Monoprints and Installation by R. Sawan White

Opening Reception

Friday, December 1, 7-9 pm

Artist Talk

Saturday, December 2, 2 pm

Artist Exhibition Statement

A setting is a place and a setting is a time. A setting is where a story happens, an entire world unfolding around beloved characters. A setting is a single quiet place at a table, an intimate arrangement for one that is part of a whole. A setting is many things with the same name.

If we live long enough we will know loss of some kind. Loss of love, loss of life, loss of home or security. And with each instance comes grief. Solid and unmoving, a hindrance and a comfort, the last connection to that which is gone and the first acknowledgment of its leaving. Grief is multifaceted, so many angles of approach and reproach, but at its core it is born of things of beauty. It is the absence of something or someone that we hold dear. The forerunners of grief are beautiful; they are joy and love, relationship and response, belonging and being.

This exhibition is about changing the setting of grief, creating an environment where the grief and its forerunners exist simultaneously. This body of paintings encircle a single table setting encased in softness. The setting is present and real but its very nature and response to its surroundings is muted and changed. When I think of grief the ultimate symbol to me is dishes and table settings. Everyday we open the cabinet and pull out chipped plates and worn glasses, setting the table in the same way for the members of our family. We eat together, we talk or don’t, we clear the plates, we wash them and we do it again. It is such a daily, common thing we barely think about it. At times in our lives we add another setting and at times we take one away. Some of us have even had the heartbreak of anticipating adding another setting only to never realize it; and whenever we look at our table we feel the absence. But that is only because we know what is missing.

And that is grief – the heartache of knowing what is missing. This body of work gives form to what is missing. It is the love and joy, the closeness and intimacy, the thousands of moments that make up living. Solid forms emerge from the overlapping in the paintings, robust and alive, each obscuring or illuminating the lines below. The foundational layers build on light and line until the final layers push back the colors, creating the boundaries of the current forms. Each piece provides a different setting, a different moment or emotion from which to filter. Each piece is a backdrop of abstracted beauty for the concrete representation of the table setting.

I wish the idea of grief wasn’t so timely. I wish it was such a foreign concept that this exhibition was completely irrelevant. But the state of our world says otherwise. And the state of my life as well. I have been to more funerals than I can count, sat beside people who are in their final minutes, marveled at others who have lived the length of my lifetime with the searing reality of loss. I have mourned the people missing from the table, both known and unknown. I have been in many of the settings of grief and it is not all bad. In these places we learn what we value, how we love well and how we fall short. And hopefully it is in these places that we can be changed.

- R. Sawan White

Exhibition runs through Dec 23, 2023.

Tilt and Sway: New Paintings and Sculpture by Tracey St. Peter

Opening Reception

Friday, September 22, 7-9 pm

Tracey St. Peter Artist Statement

Utilizing the papier-mâché process, I create forms, with strips of paper from topical headlines and stories, clipped from pages of the New York Times. The flimsy strips of newsprint become structure though repeated layering. Further in the process, these forms are covered in encaustic wax, smoothing and sealing the surface, preserving these objects, as if in amber.

The core materials in use here are discarded, and organic. These sculptures are an intervention that gives these materials a second life and purpose. Mirrors and rhinestones serve to both attract and reflect, light and color, beyond the pieces, in a dazzling display that changes with the external light. Mirrors place the viewer in the work, no longer a safe passive observer, you are implicated. We are all implicated.

Tilt and Sway is a reflection of the now, accepting the ugly, off-balance and tarnished reality of the present. It is both, a communal scream of alarm and an invitation to celebrate our shared humanity. Like a tree growing in counterbalanced movments upwards, even as the Earth itself can no longer be relied on to sustain us. The path forward is to remain nimble, seek balance and truth even as the ground shifts below us. With eyes wide open remembering, reflecting, confronting what is on a micro level as well as zooming out to an Overview Effect perspective. At this time, in this moment, simultaneously experiencing the horror and beauty, tilting and swaying towards the horizon line, as the sun rises and sets and a new days headlines arrive at our door.

Exhibition runs through October 21, 2023.

Mostly Bouguereau: Paintings by Tim Harriss

Opening Reception

Friday, May 5, 7-9 pm

Self-taught Virginia artist Tim Harriss simultaneously emulates and subverts the portrait paintings of Old Masters, morphing a subject’s features beyond characterization into the realm of measured abstraction.

In Mostly Bouguereau, Harriss has again pushed the boundaries of representation even further, this time stopping just before the subject is entirely beyond recognition. “I’ve specifically chosen to reinterpret these particular works by William Adolphe Bouguereau, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Sally Mann, and Jacob van Oost because each is well composed and technically precise and all provide enormous inspiration for exploratory abstraction.”

Exhibition runs through June 16, 2023.

Full Spectrum: New Paintings by Dave Moore

Opening Reception

Friday, March 24, 7-9 pm

“This body of work represents a return to reasonable scale after several years of focusing mostly on large-scale paintings. The result is a combination of freedom and formality, letting paint and mark making guide the way through a full spectrum of techniques, styles and subject matter.” 

— Dave Moore

 

Dave Moore is a Virginian artist and painter, born in Hampton and art-schooled in Richmond. He has been making and showing work for more than 25 years. 

Moore has paintings in private collections across the country and elsewhere. 

He has lived and worked in the Charlottesville area since 2003, and when Dave Moore is not in the studio, he can be found on the airwaves as a DJ for 91.1FM WTJU in the rock department. 

Exhibition runs through April 29, 2023.

Please, Don't Wake Me

Works by Miguel Carter-Fisher, Luis Colan, Skylar Hughes, and Walter Schrank

Opening Reception

Friday, February 10, 7-9 pm

artist talk

Saturday, February 11, 2-4 pm

Guest Curator, Miguel Carter-Fisher

Please, Don't Wake Me, a line taken from the Beatles song "I'm Only Sleeping," is the title of Eric Schindler Gallery's group exhibition featuring artists Miguel Carter-Fisher, Luis Colan, Skylar Hughes, and Walter Schrank.

The drawings, paintings, and prints are diverse in style but share a common root in the space between the ethereal and the tangible. These personal works are like pieces of faded dreams and give lasting form to the interiority of the self.

The opening reception will also feature a reimagining of "I'm Only Sleeping" by songwriter Sean Bullock.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Miguel Carter-Fisher  

Miguel Carter-Fisher is currently based in his hometown, Richmond, Virginia. His interest in the arts  began as a child and was nurtured by his father, the late painter Bill Fisher. At 18 he moved to  Connecticut, where he studied both painting and philosophy at the University of Hartford. After  graduating, Miguel moved to Brooklyn to attend the New York Academy of Art. There he studied  traditional drawing, painting, and composition techniques. After graduate school, he worked at Soho Art  Materials, where he educated artists, collectors, and galleries on diverse methods and materials of  painting. Since returning to Richmond in 2014, Miguel has taught at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,  Milk River Arts, and Bon Air Juvenile Corrections Center through Art 180. Miguel was also an assistant  professor and the studio arts coordinator at Virginia State University. He is currently an assistant  professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Miguel’s work has been exhibited at various galleries  throughout the United States and abroad. 

Luis Colan  

Luis Colan was born in Lima, Peru in 1980. At age ten he and his family moved to Connecticut, where he  continued his education from middle school through college. Attending the Hartford Art School, at the  University of Hartford, Luis was influenced by artists and professors Stephen Pat Brown, Fred Wessel,  and Jeremiah Patterson. It is from these mentors he learned new techniques and color theory that  pushed his work further. While at the Hartford Art School, Luis was introduced to abstraction under the  guidance of professor Pat Lipsky. During the short period of experimentation with abstraction he was  able to further explore color and the physicality of oil paint. 

After graduating in 2004 Luis moved to New York City, where he currently lives and works. He has  continued his education by taking classes at the Art Students League and the Teaching Studios of Art in  Brooklyn, both schools have exposed him to the teachings of Dan Thompson, Adam Miller, Robert Zeller,  and Bennett Vadnais. Working closely with these artists has allowed him to refine his ability to depict  landscapes and figures. Partaking in numerous events and workshops, including Plein Air workshops in  Tuscany in 2013 and 2015 has allowed him to continue to develop his vision as a landscape painter. He  has been exhibiting in New York and surrounding areas in several group shows, five solo exhibitions, and  in 2010 became a Junior Member at the Salmagundi Club. 

It is at the Salmagundi Club where Luis was reacquainted with Monotype printing which has become an  important part of his practice. The process has allowed him to explore and use what he has learned in  painting the landscape outdoors to execute images from imagination and memory.

Skylar Hughes  

“I am interested in art making as an embodiment of nature’s process of chance, change, and growth; I  try to paint how it feels to be in nature, connected to something outside of ourselves and the confines of  life’s everyday structures.  

This body of work focuses on seasons, divisions, and terrain as visual framework for explorations on the  concurrent nature of structure / temporality, fullness / emptiness, inner / outer, limitation / possibility, the  present / what’s next.”  

Skylar Hughes (b. 1986, New Britain, CT) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo  exhibitions include Wren in the Privet, Alias Books East (2022), Warm into the Day, The Lodge (2019),  New Torn Collage, Day Space Night (2018), We’re All Stone Raising, The Lodge (2016), and One Big  Gust of Wind, New Britain Museum of American Art (2013). Skylar has participated in group shows in  CA, NY, CT, Italy, and has work in the permanent collections of Lightforms Art Center (Hudson, NY) and  the New Britain Museum of American Art.  

Walter Schrank  

The picture plane shares space with the imaginary and workaday world  

wherein reappearing forms, marks and motifs, much like reoccurring dreams  

are arranged to represent the real.  

- Walter Schrank 

Walter Schrank is originally from Houston, Texas. He received his MFA from Maryland Institute of College  and Art. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to painting Walter is also a Poet. His two  collections are Small Barbarisms and Battle Cries of Every Size.

Exhibition runs through March 18, 2023

Gallery hours: Wed-Sat 12-5 or by appointment

Gallery Artists Holiday Celebration

with over 20 Participating Artists!

Opening Reception

Friday, December 9th, 7-9 pm 

Artists

Kyle Andrew Phillips, Ward Saunders, Kathleen Hall, Mark Pehanich, Jason E Bennett, Miguel Carter-Fisher, David Rohrer, Dolly Holmes, R. Sawan White, Scott Phillips, Kristen Peyton, Jack Lawrence, Blythe King, Ted Randler, Bob Scott, Kelly Queener, Lisa Taranto, Nicole Renee Randall, Nicholas Cossitt, Julie Elkins, and Alix Petrie 

This is a purchase and carry show!
Exhibition runs through December 23, 2022

Gallery hours:  Wed-Sat 12-5

Kyle Andrew Phillips: There in the Air

Opening Reception

Friday, September 23, 7 - 9 pm

Artist Talk

Saturday, September 24, 2 pm

Statements for There in the Air and adjacent work:

There in the Air

I have meticulously created paintings that portray surreal narratives I have experienced over the past two years. Although I did not want it to be explicitly so or blatantly obvious, I am using covid as a lens that distorts the intricacies of our world. Hence the show’s title. Combined with referential imagery, contrasted darks and lights, atmosphere and humor, I wanted to tell these stories and show contradictions. 

The paintings mainly depict New York City and capture the emptiness of urban life during the pandemic. There are no figures in the majority of these paintings. There is just one, Flight Over Leonard St., depicting a boy on a rooftop who is playing alone amongst imagined monsters that he will soon lose his toy plane to. I feel we can relate to this child as recent times have brought about new fears and uncertainties of the future. Yet his toy airplane is flying towards light. There is hope of a safe landing and retrieval of the plane.

Strong light is a motif that carries through the work as a symbol of a better future. Some paintings are homages to paintings from the past, like Arnold Bocklin’s Isle of the Dead. Others take us to barren lands in an end of the world scenario like Desert Thoughts, an homage to Lars von Triers’ film Melancholia. 

In Circles

This series was started years ago after the loss of a loved one as a type of lengthy meditation between my commissioned work and abstract work. I began painting these landscapes as a means to mentally escape to, with future plans of travel. The project took years to complete and as a result its meaning evolved overtime. At first I wanted these places all to myself but even though that intention changed, the lack of figures inhabiting the spaces is a product of that. The isolation a painter must go through to work can seem intense but I used it as a way to find myself and as a motif in the work. I hope now that viewers are also able to escape through these small portholes and into the landscapes. 

The first six paintings are from found photographs and the final four are from select locales I was grateful to have visited myself. They began to become documentations of the new, wonderful things I was experiencing. The views depicted were chosen for their uniqueness and in the cases in which they were found photographs, the connection I felt through the photographer. 

Skulls

This is a long-running memento mori series that celebrates life with motifs, humor and having fun with the paint. The skulls initially started as a simple color theory project to occupy my time in the start of the pandemic, and I began incorporating more literal themes into them. There are homages to other artists, nods to books and movies, and a celebration of all kinds of human achievement and food.

Kyle Andrew Phillips lives in Brooklyn, NY. He has had multiple group shows in NYC and abroad as well as solo shows in Connecticut. His work can be found in permanent collection of The New Britain Museum of American Art in CT and numerous private collections across the country.

Exhibition ends October 22, 2022.

KATHLEEN HALL: UNSTILL LIFE

ART OPENING

Friday, May 6, 7-9 pm


OPEN HOUSE

Saturday, May 7, 2-4 pm

Kathleen Hall is a Virginia-based painter working primarily from direct observation. Born in Columbus, Ohio to a family of artists, she went on to receive her BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from the University of New Hampshire. Kathleen has been a resident at numerous artist colonies including Yaddo, the Vermont Studio Center, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program, the Cité Internationale des Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught painting and drawing at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the College of William and Mary, UNC Asheville, and Centre College in Kentucky. 

The exhibition will feature recent oil paintings as well as a series of miniature gouache paintings of trees inspired by illuminated manuscripts. You can read a recent interview with Kathleen here.

Exhibition runs through May 28th

Gallery hours: Wed-Sat 12-4 or by appointment

Mark Pehanich: New Paintings and Prints

ART OPENING

Friday, April 1, 7-9 pm

OPEN HOUSE

Saturday, April 2, 1-4 pm

ARTIST STATEMENT

Line, shape and color illustrate the intuitive in my work. Images are extracted from  small line drawings. which are gestural and freeform at times and geometric and  formal at others. Combining and modifying multiple drawings produce surprising  and unexpected results. Compositions are developed through extensive  experimentation and exhaustive editing. Materials range from a variety of  traditional paints to oxidized metallic paint, shredded tire rubber, micro glass  beads and other additives. The process is disciplined, but guided entirely by  intuition. The paintings are left to stand on their own to achieve an identity that  speaks through its qualities. This elemental approach gives the paintings room to  breathe and frees the viewer from the demands of literal interpretation.

Mark Pehanich is a painter and sculptor originally from Chicago. He has a BFA  from Northern Illinois University and an MFA from Brooklyn College, where  he studied with Lee Bontecou, Phillip Pearlstein, Alan D’Arcangelo, and  Lennart Anderson. He has taught painting, drawing and sculpture at the  Appomattox Regional Governors School and Richard Bland College. After  living in Brooklyn, NY, for 18 years, Mark moved to Petersburg, where he and  his wife converted an old cotton and peanut warehouse into studio spaces.  

Mark has exhibited his paintings and sculpture widely, including the Brooklyn  Museum, Stamford Museum, Butler Institute of Art, El Paso Museum, Virginia  Tech, and Kyoto Gallery in Japan. A former board member of the Sculptors  Guild and the National Mural Society, he has created murals and large-scale  public sculpture in New York and Virginia. Mark is the recipient of numerous  awards, including the Charles G. Shaw award. He is currently represented by  Eric Schindler Gallery in Richmond, VA. 

Exhibition runs through April 29, 2022

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12-4 or by appointment. Please follow the Eric Schindler Gallery on Facebook and Instagram for updates or any changes.

Jason E. Bennett, Landscapes

Oil, gouache, and digital paintings

ART OPENING

Friday, March 4, 7-9 pm

OPEN HOUSE

Saturday, March 5, 1-4 pm

Jason Bennett was raised in Mechanicsville, VA and has lived up and down the east coast working primarily in the field of video game development. Bennett’s work has appeared in international projects including Bioshock Infinite, Shadow of the Colossus, Madden NFL, and more. Clients have included: Sony, Electronic Arts, Major League Baseball, Wizards of the Coast, Def Jam Recordings, and NASA. He currently resides in Richmond, VA and teaches with VCU’s Communication Arts Department.

The March 2022 Eric Schindler “Landscapes” show features a collection of paintings (utilizing oils, gouache, and digital media) completed primarily onsite in various locations throughout Richmond, Virginia. The intent of the work is to study visual phenomena with paint - light, color, shape, texture, and edges - and to appreciate the beauty of our ever-changing world.

Exhibition runs through March 26, 2022

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12-4 or by appointment. Please follow the Eric Schindler Gallery on Facebook and Instagram for updates or any changes.

David Narum: Intentions and Improvisations

ART OPENING

Friday, February 4, 7-9 pm

OPEN HOUSE

Saturday, February 5, 1-4 pm

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been painting much of my adult life. There have been interludes dominated by child rearing, furniture making and kitchen remodeling. Nevertheless, it’s art work that always returns to the fore to nurture and confuse. I am focused on the process of producing surprises. I never know exactly where the work will take me. The paintings are improvisations containing descriptive images that remain open to the viewers interpretation. They are fantasies that exist in a specific time and place but remain undefined. The images grow organically but have the imprint of manufacture. Every picture tells a story. For me as the artist the painting is what remains on the panel when I decide I’m finished. It’s a relic of many decisions made. Hopefully for the viewer there’s a whole new narrative to be discovered.

Exhibition runs through February 26, 2022

Masks required and to be worn at all times inside the gallery. Please follow the Eric Schindler Gallery on Facebook and Instagram for updates or any changes.

Jennifer Holloway Bopst: Recommended For Ages 4 & Up

Art Opening

Friday, December 3, 7-9 pm

Open House

Saturday, December 4, 1-4 pm

Exhibition runs through December 23, 2021

Gallery hours:  Wed-Sat 12-4 or by appointment

Artist Statement

Jennifer Holloway Bopst
Recommended For Ages 4 & Up
Dedicated to my father, William Martin Holloway
(1942 - 2016)

As a portrait artist, I like to add non traditional elements in with my paintings.

My past works include a plastic bobblehead series, lollipop heads, even Potatohead makes an occasional appearance. I love the playful element of the toys, in relation to the human subject in the paintings.

For this series, I chose the iconic novelty disguise of comedian Groucho Marx as a universally recognized way to connect us through our funny bones. Groucho was a legendary zany character that spent nearly 7 decades making people laugh.

This body of work is a lighthearted exploration into the human psyche.
The future looks bright!


“Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.”
- Groucho Marx

FUTURE ANCESTORS: Blythe King

OPENING: Friday, Nov. 5, 7-9 pm

OPEN HOUSE: Saturday, Nov. 6, 1-4 pm

VIRTUAL OPENING: Thursday, Nov. 4, 7 pm (Eric Schindler Gallery Facebook)

Time is a being — like you, like me.

“Monahwee made friends with Time. When he got on his horse to race his beloved warrior friends, they had a little talk. Time said, “Get on my back and we’ll fly free.” No matter how fast the others raced, Monahwee and his horse always arrived long before it was possible. Those were the best of times.” Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.

'“Time is not always the way we imagine it to be. Our experience may appear sequential, but that is not the full experience. How do we connect with time, be time, as opposed to understanding the past, present, and future as separate from ourselves? Beings, things, and events do not exist in time: beings, things, and events are times.” Shinshu Roberts, Being-Time.

“Indigenous and Zen Buddhist approaches to time offer breaks from the usual linear understanding of it. It’s multidimensional and living, like you and me. Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself — its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. All things that were will come again.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass.

Future Ancestors connects us to time by simultaneously merging past, present, and future. Each woman is both unique and universal — history and prophecy. She is born moons ago, drifts through oblivion, and resurfaces anew. She lives for the future.

Exhibition runs November 5 - 27, 2021.

Miguel Carter-Fisher, Negative Shapes

Opening

Friday, June 11, 6-9 pm

Special guest guitarist Dylan Barrows will perform "The Warmth of Silences," a new composition written for this exhibition, at 8:00 pm.

VIRTUAL OPENING will be Thursday, June 10 at 7:00 pm on the Eric Schindler Gallery Facebook page.

Open House

Saturday, June 12, 1-5 pm

Artist Statement for Negative Shapes

What is the shape between memories and the present? Identity and the body? Embraces and resentments? Children and parents? Longing and fear? Intimacy and detachment? Our ancestry and our future?

In drawing, a negative shape is the space between objects. Although it is the contour of a void, perceiving this shape is essential to understanding the relationship between things.

- Miguel Carter-Fisher

 Exhibition runs through July 9.