« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Art Gallery Reception – Phillip Robertson & Ed Epstein

January 14, 2023 @ 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Saturday, January 14 | 2 – 4 pm (Drop in)
(Regular exhibit hours: 8:30 – 4:30 M-F through February 27)

Please join us at North Branch Nature Center for an afternoon celebrating Phillip Robertson’s relief prints (left) and Ed Epstein’s charcoal drawings (above). Tour the gallery, meet the artists, and enjoy some refreshments. A portion of artwork sales will support NBNC in our mission of Connecting People with the Natural World.

 

About Phillip Robertson 

Phillip Robertson is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and printmaker, living in Vermont since 1994. Phillip is inspired by the natural landscape, using his imagination and memory to look beyond realism to make a statement about the pastoral landscape tradition in the 21st century. He earned his BFA in Painting with a Minor in Art History from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1989 and earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College in 2008. Robertson currently teaches printmaking, drawing, painting and art history at Northern Vermont University (Johnson Campus) and the Community College of Vermont. He is the Director of the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery on the Johnson campus of Northern Vermont University and has been involved as a volunteer at the T.W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier, Vermont since 1997.

Phillip’s work in this show consists of framed reduction prints created from sketches made in Vermont, Maine, and New England. A reduction print is a relief print created on linoleum utilizing the white of the paper, a mid-range value color and the final layer of black ink. They are printed by hand and produced in small editions.

About Ed Epstein

An artist and musician all his life, Ed Epstein started drawing very early, like most kids, but he stayed with it while most others moved on to other things. Music and art have been the throughline for his life. From childhood, Ed was always drawing the world around him and filled many sketchbooks with his observations. Over the years he made woodcuts, lithographs and etchings. He seldom exhibited his artwork, but used his skills as an artist to earn a living through courtroom illustrations, technical drawings, and engravings on granite.

When Ed returned to Vermont in 2010 after living in Trinidad for 10 years, he focused on painting portraits. In Trinidad, he had discovered black sketchbooks in which you draw light on dark. This opened his eyes to a completely new way of seeing and renewed his interest in drawing.
The drawings in this exhibit are a return to black on white, drawing shadows as opposed to drawing light. Ed started working on these charcoal drawings a few years ago, drawn to the simplicity of the technique: burnt wood and paper. He loves the richness of the medium, with its wide range of tones and textures. Unlike his earlier work, which often made use of his quick hand and eye, these drawings usually take several days to finish and require an intense focus, inducing the kind of meditative concentration rather at odds with what he used to do. When drawing the trees, he finds himself getting lost in the intense thicket – in the complexity of the branches and leaves and the spaces between them, where sky light comes through.

 

Details

Date:
January 14, 2023
Time:
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Event Category:

Venue

North Branch Nature Center
713 Elm Street
Montpelier, Vermont 05602

Organizer

North Branch Nature Center