Reception for Boisvert and St. Mary show at Gallery 195 Tuesday evening

Gallery 195
195 Church St., 4th floor (First Niagara Bank), New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Ethan Boisvert and Mark K. St. Mary
Through Jun. 14, 2013.
Artists' Reception: Tues., Apr. 23, 5-7 p.m.

Press release from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven

The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibition of paintings by Connecticut artists Ethan Boisvert and Mark K. St. Mary at Gallery 195 at First Niagara Bank, 195 Church St., 4th floor, New Haven. The exhibition will be on display during bank hours from Mar. 19 through Jun. 14, 2013. An artists’ reception is scheduled for Tues., Apr. 23, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

Ethan Boisvert and Mark K. St. Mary are both obsessed with colorful patterns and layered patinas rich with memories, yet each artist achieved this quality in their artwork through a different lens: St. Mary literally through the camera lens and Boisvert, through a heavily built up painted canvas. St Mary, using light, shadow and color, reframes recognizable places into abstract environments; seen together, these artists create abstractions that suggest both micro and macro universes.

Boisvert builds his canvas surface from densely layered, broad gestural marks- brushed and stamped- building a history of the artist's process in each painting. Borrowing from a rich tradition of abstraction, he reworks his canvases to reach what he considers "equilibrium."

Ethan Boisvert: "All Undone with Insipid Subsume"

"In my painting, I take a 21st century approach, an appropriation of styles created by the 20th century avant-garde. One could say that I sample or loosely appropriate purified styles and combine them into new works—a synthesizer if you will," Boisvert explains in his artist statement on his Web site.

Mark K. St. Mary is a photographer who also has formal training in horticultural design and holds a Masters in biology. In addition, he is a professional landscaper and carpenter whose other means of artistic expression are restoring period houses and designing and building custom furniture. An avid amateur photographer for 36 years, St. Mary began exhibiting work in 2007.

"My work is a visual representation of my emotional connection to elements of the environment. I strive to create a sense of presence, capturing a mood through the intersection of light, form and color… It has more to do with the value of light and shadow than with the actual subject—allowing the subject to acquire a grace unavailable in context so that the subject becomes irrelevant," St. Mary explains in an artist statement on his Web site.