Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present The World Alongside Ours, an exhibition of printed and hand-colored large-scale woodblock prints by contemporary artist Eve Stockton. This is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery who has represented her since 2012.
Nature is the ultimate creator and a limitless well-spring of inspiration. It is the most often sited influence and catalyst for artists. Nature based artwork persists as the most loved and collected genre. Eve Stockton’s work has always been part of this time-honored continuum. In the artist’s own words: “When I step outside inspiration is everywhere. Nature’s variety and wonders are humbling. How does one capture the evanescent moments of fast-moving clouds, light through the trees or the bursting forth of new life? My images are an attempt to express just such phenomena.”
Stockton spends most summer days surrounded by nature, skillfully carving three-foot wood blocks in a remote Canadian cabin. Each hand-carved block is inked and printed on Coventry rag paper. A print is often re-inked and layered with other blocks to create a complex symphony of field and ground, color and form. The artist may further modify the layered print with watercolor or tea-stain, colored pencil or pen to amplify the composition or to highlight and add drama to particular features. Stockton’s woodcuts are a distillation of the natural world observed and the primordial world she imagines. The varied natural imagery often involves scale shifts, evoking trees, clouds and landscapes as well as cellular activity.
A trained architect as well as a professional artist, Stockton’s multifaceted interests extend to science, environmentalism and art history. Her curiosity is evidenced by her ingenuity in combining ideas and her endless capacity for experimentation within a defined medium.
Stockton’s work is widely collected and included in the collections of Kaiser Permanente, New York, NY, Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA, Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT, Brown University’s D. W. Bell Gallery, Providence, RI, Corstone Capital, Washington, DC, Nemea Museum, Nemea, Greece, New York University/Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, New York Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, to name a few.
