"Multi-focus Memoryscapes" show opens at UNH Thursday evening

Seton Art Gallery at the University of New Haven
Doods Hall, University of New Haven, 300 Boston Post Rd., West Haven, (203) 931-6065
Multi-focus Memoryscapes
Mar. 7—28, 2013.
Reception: Thurs., Mar. 7, 6—8 p.m.

Press release from Seton Art Gallery

The 3rd century Greek saying, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is a phrase that not only discusses subjective attraction but can also be applied to artist intuition when choosing a subject. Whether it is a composition, juxtaposition of imagery, or imagining of an idyllic landscape, all three artists in Multi-focus Memoryscapes approach their work with a sense of intrigue and irony.

Memory, much like a dream, is never sharply in focus or detail but always suggestive, says William McCarthy.

A memoryscape is not an exact representation of a factual world, rather it is an impression or evocation of things remembered. Many of Graham Honaker's, Hank Paper's, and William McCarthy's memoryscapes invoke nostalgia while some share a subtle humor with the viewer. There are multiple themes that run throughout the exhibition including commentaries on popular advertising and culture, the longing for an imagined or once visited landscape, and a return to former values or ways of living.

From moments of quiet reflection with William McCarthy's soft-focus, dream-like landscapes, all of which are in fact painted from memory; to the urban-scape collage paintings of Graham Honaker II that—like layers of dreams rising up—combine disparate iconography from the past with abstract figurative work that evoke memories of a certain time and place and emotion, to Hank Paper's photographs of moments in time that showcase the off-kilter beauty of everyday life, turning the real into the surreal, "We offer a palate of projections that will hopefully move the viewer to a place deeper within him-or-herself," says Hank Paper.

In passing through the exhibition, the varied styles and approaches of each artist coalesce via color, references to culture and society, and the feeling of timelessness and weightlessness.

Originally from New Mexico, Graham D. Honaker II lives and works in Hamden, Connecticut. He received his BFA from Eastern New Mexico University. Influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Street Art, his paintings comment on contemporary society with subjects ranging from potentially harmful political structures to the simple poetics of everyday life. Also influenced by Existentialism, which emphasizes the act of creating, Honaker exercises his subconscious through auto-painting. He is currently represented by Eidos, LLC.

William McCarthy is originally from Columbus Ohio and works in a basement studio in Hamden, Connecticut. From memory, he paints variations of the Connecticut landscape, along with images of Cape Ann salt marshes and the flat countryside of Ohio. These landscapes coupled with an abstract sensibility are reappearing themes and devises that allow him to create the illusion of atmospheric perspective. His solo exhibition venues include The Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT, Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven, CT, Middlesex Community College, Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, Weir Farm Trust, Wilton, CT, Muse Gallery in Columbus, OH, and Trudy LaBelle Fine Arts, in Naples, FL.

Hank Paper documents contemporary culture and society in the streets of North America, The United Kingdom, Western Europe, the Middle East, and Cuba. He turns the quotidian into the quintessential, the real into the surreal, and the actual into a dream. His many solo exhibition venues have included The African American Museum in Philadelphia; Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel; the High Point Historical Museum in North Carolina; The Jewish Museum of New Jersey; the Morgenthal-Frederics Gallery, the Tamarkin Leica Gallery, and The Harlem School of the Arts in New York. He has also exhibited extensively in New Haven, where he is a member of the Kehler Liddell Gallery.