We are thrilled to welcome visitors back to our Middlebury galleries. We hope that many of you will be able to view our exhibitions live but we realize that this is still a time to be cautious and to feel comfortable. The safety of our staff and our guests is our top concern and we will therefore be following current health guidelines from the state and the CDC, for operating a Vermont business. We feel that, especially now, it is important to give visitors an alternative to being in our physical spaces and so we will continue to present virtual tours of our exhibitions on our website. These virtual tours will give viewers the opportunity to experience shows as they appear in the gallery environment and to see individual works up close, with artist information and details of each piece.

REFLECTIONS
A GROUP EXHIBITION
Kathleen Kolb, Lori Mehta & Karen O’Neil

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Welcome to the virtual presentation of our exhibition “Reflections”, a group exhibition on view through the end of July, featuring the work of Kathleen Kolb, Lori Mehta, and Karen O’Neil.The use and study of reflection is an important element in each of the artist’s collections, featured in this exhibition. Light reflects off colored glass in Karen O’Neil’s still life paintings, or off the water in Vermont landscape painter Kathleen Kolb’s serene lake scene, or it is portrayed in a bold graphic style in Lori Mehta’s figures. All three artists evoke a sense of warmth and intimacy in their skilled use of light’s reflective nature. Viewers experiencing the  “Reflections” exhibition are transported to a different time and place, and mood.

 

It is important to note also, that the work for this show was created during the height of the COVID-19 crisis and that the three artists found that the theme of “Reflections” took on meaning beyond the physical nature of light bouncing back off an object. All three women were impacted by the weight of creating art during this unprecedented time and found themselves meditating, or reflecting on, what it meant to make art in this new reality. Art can serve as a refuge from what’s happening around us, or it can be a mirror of the outside world. Kolb, Mehta and O’Neil each felt the challenge of painting and persevering in this strange new era.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

As I complete the work for this exhibition I am reflecting on this difficult time in human history, during the Covid 19 Pandemic. My two newest paintings refer to this obliquely. Yellow Barn, Spring is an effort to bring cheer, manifesting the bright force of life’s insistent renewal. Waiting explores facing an indistinct horizon and going deeper, to evoke the uncertain vulnerability of where we are and to offer the solid balm of beauty when we can’t know what’s ahead. This is related to the emotional content of my nocturne paintings, in which darkness obscures detail, simplifies form, and offers the perspective of the outsider.

As always, my paintings are about light: direct, reflected, refracted. The sublime beauty of light is the core of what I love about the visual world. In these works light is reflected in windows, on the satin luster of clapboards, on steel rails, on water. I invite viewers to reflect on what they see in the paintings and, I hope, sense what has occupied my mind as I paint.

Lori Mehta

The entire world has turned upside down. In this upturn, our pace has slowed down and our appreciation for things we once took for granted has been awakened.

The inspiration for my work is derived from simple, everyday moments. There might be a recognizable posture when you see your daughter pulling her hair up, or you might recall a child’s first visit to a water fountain, maybe even their voice as they ask to be lifted up to reach the stream of water. Perhaps a cover up was tossed onto a sandbar as someone ran into the waves. My hope is you are able to see your own relatable moments in my work, and this may evoke your own narrative. I create paintings that are on the brink of telling a story, but the completion of this story is yours.

Each day of this new pandemic reality, I remind myself of the advice a dear friend once gave me – “focus on the joy”.  The joy of seeing and following the daylight in my studio has been a stabilizing force in my life for the past few months.

These past few months have been full of reflections for me, prioritizing what is profoundly important: family, fellow artists, community, and the process of painting. Light, I think, is a visual symbol of connectedness. It is the binder that holds everything together. All these ideas reflect heavily in my paintings lately and have been my inspiration for these recent works.

We are pleased to have been able to reopen our gallery doors and to be able to invite our customers to see this exhibition in person! We recognize however, that this is still a time to be cautious and to follow current health guidelines, and so though we are open for business, we will continue to offer our exhibitions virtually at www.edgewatergallery.com.

For more information on “Reflections”, a group exhibition featuring artists Kathleen Kolb, Lori Mehta and Karen O’Neil, visit or call the gallery at 802-989-7419, or email us at [email protected].

ARTWORK

Kathleen Kolb

Lori Mehta

Karen O’Neil

Edgewater Gallery
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