 Brian Cypher A show of works by Brian Cypher and Emily Gherard at i.e., a new home for art in Edison in Skagit County, is worth a trip. | Tiny Skagit County town nurtures fledgling art scene - Published in Seattle Times, September 15, 2015 Artists and artisans seeking alternatives to the big city have always been drawn to picturesque locations, like tiny Edison (pop. 130) in the Skagit Valley, whose funky storefronts now house bakeries, restaurants, a boutique and two serious (non-tourist) art galleries. The just-opened i.e., run by two expat Seattle painters, has already featured several strong shows, and this month’s two-person exhibition featuring Emily Gherard and Brian Cypher is no exception. Both Gherard and Cypher create work, which is uncompromisingly personal and gritty, eschewing easily recognizable imagery for abstract or nearly abstract compositions emphasizing materials and process. Emily’s work is darker, more worked, and highly meditative, purged of all but the most subtle color and playing with the fluid boundaries that separate depth from flatness, objects in the real world from concepts in the artist’s mind. Her two subjects – walls and rocks – allow her to indulge her love of surface, as both walls and rocks can support any manner of texture or smoothness, achieved here by a long and complicated process of building up, scraping back, layering on, and mixing both wet and dry media. Both Emily and Bryan’s shows are great examples of work that can only be fully appreciated in person, as the subtle physical qualities of their paintings are lost in reproduction. |
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