Maya Frodeman Gallery (formerly Tayloe Piggott Gallery) is pleased to present Selected Paintings (2010 – 2023) an exhibition of paintings by artist Eric Aho on view February 8th through March 24th, 2024. Eric Aho is an American painter known for his immersive paintings of the natural world. An opening reception will be held Thursday, February 8th, from 5 – 7 pm. All are welcome.
This exhibition presents a specific palette within the artist’s oeuvre—the beloved pale of winter. With color and form that bridges the way we experience nature in totality, Aho’s canvases at every scale, occupy a zone of perception between sober realism and ecstatic abstraction. While Aho works from his own impressions and memories of the landscape, the artist also draws upon major pillars of art history—including De Kooning, Goya, Homer, and Constable—to define his compositions.
As writer Tim Weed describes, in Aho’s work, “A vibrating current of electricity dwells just behind everything in nature and the encounter with the painting, like [an] encounter with [a] trout, links you to that current, if only for a fleeting instant. A connection is made between you and something larger. Something important and true.” Within each painting, Aho brilliantly captures the dichotomy of being in the wilderness, feeling connected to the environment and at the same moment disrupting the natural setting.
Each piece captures immensities made intimate; each painting is an attempt to wrangle time and reality. In his artist’s statement, Eric Aho asks us to take a moment: “Standing before a canvas, like standing in the woods, is much the same. It takes a moment for the eye to adjust to less light in the forest as much as it does to quiet the mind. Is this what Whitman meant by “unminding”—to just look without disturbance?”
Born in Melrose, Massachusetts, Aho studied at the Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, England and then received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA. Aho has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions were held at New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH, the Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, and the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, among others.
