Nature collides
As a number of local artists have increasingly come to demonstrate, nature has a way of creeping unbidden into built environments—whether through decay, infestation or fire. The latest exploration of nature’s sometimes violent intersections with the man-made comes from painter Patrick Willett, whose recent work goes on view today in the tiny Queen City Gallery in downtown’s Market Arcade Building (617 Main St.). Willett’s work, a series of recent watercolor-on-paper pieces, reflects his lifelong fascination with nature and man’s place in relationship to it—that old theme of Homer, Melville and Burchfield and, lately and locally, J. M. Reed, Dennis Maher and Julian Montague among scads and scads of others. Willett brings a decidedly traditional approach to these considerations in his paintings of burning churches and telephone poles set against swirling twilight skies.
As a number of local artists have increasingly come to demonstrate, nature has a way of creeping unbidden into built environments—whether through decay, infestation or fire. The latest exploration of nature’s sometimes violent intersections with the man-made comes from painter Patrick Willett, whose recent work goes on view today in the tiny Queen City Gallery in downtown’s Market Arcade Building (617 Main St.). Willett’s work, a series of recent watercolor-on-paper pieces, reflects his lifelong fascination with nature and man’s place in relationship to it—that old theme of Homer, Melville and Burchfield and, lately and locally, J. M. Reed, Dennis Maher and Julian Montague among scads and scads of others. Willett brings a decidedly traditional approach to these considerations in his paintings of burning churches and telephone poles set against swirling twilight skies.
“My work involves the healing and renewing aspects of nature as well as the awareness of place that we all share,” Willett wrote in a statement about the show. “I believe we are molded by our surroundings to a great degree, which makes the act of landscape painting a somewhat autobiographical effort.”
The show remains on view through June 13. For more information, call 856-2839 or visit www.pwillett.com.
—Colin Dabkowski
