Robert Spellman Painting Exhibit

A series of eight paintings recently created by Robert Spellman, featuring enigmatic beetles on glowing, textured surfaces, is on exhibit now in the Garrison Institute’s ambulatory. Visitors are welcome weekdays, 9-5. Spellman says of these works:

“I did the present series at the invitation of the Garrison Institute. It was an opportunity to produce a set of paintings on a theme, to be exhibited in an environment where people on retreat could see them with an ordinary frame of mind, not burdened by the complication of looking at ‘art.’ Paintings have a tough life these days. It takes time to see a painting; it can take hours, days or even years to really see a painting. This is not something many people have time for. I think the trick is to place paintings where people see them regularly and often, perhaps without even realizing it; this can provide a way of seeing without effort or seeing without a conceptual framework. Sometimes we don’t notice how much presence a painting can have until it is removed from a space it has occupied for time; the absence can be as striking as the gap left when a tree is cut down.”

Robert Spellman is an artist and teacher currently living in Boulder, Colorado. He is on the faculty of Naropa University’s Visual Arts, Religious Studies, and Graduate Performance Studies, teaching studio classes and meditation and the vast overlap between the two. See more of his work at Art and Soul Gallery in Boulder or visit his web site www.robertspellman.com.