SOMESVILLE—It’s Not What You Look At, But What You See:
Featuring four New England realists responding to the world around them, with the distinct observation of accurate detail (light, form, and texture), while still capturing subjects often revealing the emotional depth beneath the surface of everyday life. It’s a disciplined practice of “seeing” rather than just looking, translating objective reality through personal perception.
“I have learned that oil paint is infinitely mutable. Though I began with watercolors, painting on site, completing most works in a day or two, for more complicated images I would use oil paint and came to appreciate their “anything is possible” quality. I like to paint detailed realistic images. Two things caused my current style and genre: a friend with a sailboat in Maine, and subsequently a patron who liked my oil paintings and basically purchased everything I painted for 13 years. I carried a pochade box on our sailing cruises and a camera, painting and shooting as we went up and down the Maine coast. Once back in Vermont and my studio I would work up larger paintings over the winter. Both my patron and my friend with the sailboat have passed away but I continue in the manner and now have my own boat with which I hope to see and paint for years to come. I paint my subjects until they feel present and hope that viewers feel the same.” William Hoyt
“For the past twenty-five years, my focus for painting has been exclusively on the coast, surrounding waters and interior of Mount Desert Island, Maine. From my first sight of the island, I regarded it as a place of benediction--a giant, tuned instrument that resonates with a light that is both evanescent and eternal. My abiding interest is in evoking this mysterious blend of form, light, and spirit with an approach that is firmly based in the realist tradition..” Ernest McMullen
“My teachers were very interested in the same thing, and I think people tend to follow in the same direction as their teachers. It’s a real challenge to see what’s surrounding us, most people think they see but aren’t really paying enough attention. It’s also a real challenge to make a painting that’s really alive and has air that you can breathe and to do it with large and little abstract marks of paint. Years ago, I was in musée d’Orsay in Paris and was lucky enough to be alone on the top floor - I was hypnotized by a Monet painting and walked toward it and away from it repeatedly until I found the magical distance where it took off and became alive -then when it was just paint - then when it was real again - back and forth - I loved it - maybe that’s what I’m after, I don’t know…”. Rett Sturman
“I paint in a highly realistic way to preserve the subject’s idiosyncratic details and to be true its sense of place. The goal of the laborious effort is to bring all elements together into a unified atmosphere, a contemplative state of mind, which is what I hope viewers will experience. I was attracted to this style by seeing the work of realist masters who were able to skillfully reproduce optical “reality” and simultaneously make their own unique statement.” David Vickery
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