JON IMBER: PASTEL RHYTHMS  The pastels in this exhibition were created in the 1990s Jon Imber (1950–2014) when he met artist Jill Hoy, during their courtship, the first eight years of their marriage, and the birth of their son Gabe. Imber’s approach to pastels was highly singular, nontraditional. He selected specific locations with personal resonance like Quarry Behind Our House, Stonington (1997), and Janice Plumb’s Queen Anne’s Lace (1991), which he painted during one of their many painting dates. Thickery, November, Fifield Point (1991), was another “date painting.” When they set up their easels in the field, Hoy naturally faced the ocean, while Imber would invariably face in the opposite direction toward the thickery. He liked the energy of the tangled vegetation and the gnarled tree trunks.

From beginning, Imber had a practice of working in pastels en plein air, and then bringing them into the studio, and developing them into large major oil paintings. He worked out his ideas in this manner. Both Rope’s and Buoy’s (ca. 1993) and Peter’s Boat Gear (1994) became fodder for a number of large nautical oil paintings. Once Imber became a father, he was unable to spend endless hours in the studio. Instead, he began to move away from studio painting to working en plein air in oils. He found that he could finish a painting in one setting rather than labor over a canvas for months in the studio. Eventually, Imber began to work in pastels solely for their own intrinsic value, using them less as source material.

Imber worked intensely with pastels, drawing in color and building an energy field that connected deep within his soul. His raw strength and spiritual essence is on full display in Cedar Tree By The Reach (1992). This visually arresting and emotionally charged pastel sits between representation and abstraction, order and chaos, asking the viewer to feel what it’s like to be among trees, to move and breathe in that space.

Artist Philip Allen, for whom drawing is central to his work, and Imber’s best friend since childhood, best describes the allure of pastels for Imber: “Pastels were a more spontaneous and reactive medium than oils, one wherein he could simply pick up a color—by intention or mistake, and crosshatch or overlay—rather than deal with all the complex considerations of mixing paint.”

These pastels truly illuminate Imber’s gestural hand. They are the rhythms seen throughout his paintings as well, full of vigor and nuanced muscularity.