In Formation

September 12th through October 31st, 2026

Edgewater Gallery at the Falls, One Mill Street, Middlebury

In Formation brings together the work of two artists who transform their surroundings through color, texture, material, and process. Though their approaches are distinctly different, both Marcia Crumley and Jane Davies are interested in the moment when a source is translated into something less literal and more expressive.

Marcia Crumley draws inspiration from the New England landscape, distilling scenes of forests, fields, coastlines, birds, and botanicals into simplified forms and vibrant compositions. Working primarily in encaustic, she builds her paintings through layers of pigmented wax, fusing, carving, scraping, and adding texture to the surface. The physicality of the medium is central to the work: beneath the recognizable forms are layers of color, gesture, and material that invite close looking. She aims to capture the intensity of a season, the movement of weather, or the sudden beauty of pattern in landscape.

Jane Davies approaches abstraction through a similarly exploratory relationship with materials. Color, shape, line, pattern, and texture provide the vocabulary for her paintings, while collage and mixed media introduce additional layers of chance and discovery. Rather than beginning with a predetermined endpoint, Davies allows the work to evolve through an ongoing dialogue between spontaneous marks and deliberate decisions. She often revisits, paints over, rearranges, and reconfigures her compositions, allowing the history of the process to remain visible in the finished work.

Placed together, Crumley and Davies reveal two different paths toward abstraction. Crumley begins with the observed world and reduces it to its essential forms; Davies begins with materials and formal elements and allows images, structures, and relationships to emerge. One looks outward to nature, the other inward to the possibilities of the painting itself. Yet both find richness in layering, experimentation, and the unexpected ways that color and texture can transform an image.

For more information, call 802-458-0098 or email us at info@edgewastergallery-vt.com.