August 7 – September 8, 2023

Tom Curry: Kinds of Blues

Artist’s Reception: Wednesday, August 16 from 5–7pm

Tom Curry explores a range of blues to paint skies, clouds, water, and in one dramatic painting all sky with just the tree tops visible, tapping into the spiritual power of blue.

Curry, who has been painting for over twenty-eight years, frequently revisits the landscape of Chatto, a small island just offshore from his home. Chatto has become the subject of an ongoing series of more than sixty paintings, many of which were highlighted in the monograph Island: Paintings by Tom Curry (Down East Books 2012). The enduring magnetism of Curry’s island paintings is his ability to depict what he calls the paradox of place: “It is not fixed, but always changing—the light shifts from moment to moment, water is never still, clouds come and go.”

For Curry, the landscape is more than a passive backdrop of scenery. His work explores the passing of time and the relationship between stillness and flux. He wants the viewer to feel alive—to experience the wild, muscular, and ultimately unknowable mysteries of natural forces that are breathing, ever changing, and seamless.

Mirage-like, Chatto becomes a manifestation of one’s desire to find something enduring in the view—in what can sometimes be a dark world. — Carl Little, Courthouse Gallery exhibition catalog 2020