OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Flora and Fauna

Wendy Edwards, Heidi Johnson, Ben Snead

June 1 - 23, 2007
Reception: Friday, June 1, 5:30 - 7:30pm

O·H+T is pleased to present Flora and Fauna, an exhibition of new paintings by gallery artists Wendy Edwards, Heidi Johnson and Ben Snead.

Wendy Edwards's large painting Wake Up marks a move away from her purely abstract work. Though she still uses a net-like layer of extruded paint over broadly painted color fields, Edwards now introduces floral shapes reminiscent of "pop" daisies. There is a temptation to compare the result to lace or tatting, but that analogy would overlook the organic nature of the work. Like cells with a mind of their own, daisies (large, small, and in clusters) proliferate to create an undulating veil that floats over an intense orange field.

A crazed, blue parakeet cranes its neck around to peer from its perch, while a knot of snakes, one crowned and bejewled, threatens from the open door of the birdcage. Welcome to the world of Heidi Johnson. Delving ever deeper into her imagination, Johnson combines kitsch, domestic debris, and nature to create works that evoke emotions ranging from humor to fear. As she continues to document our "culture of overwhelm," Johnson produces beautifully painted work that pays homage to Dutch still-life painting, hand painted signs, and cheesy advertising.

Known for his kaleidoscopic paintings of fish, birds, bugs, and frogs, Ben Snead returns to themes that he explored in his earliest work. The visual complexity and painterly skill of Snead's pattern pieces can distract from his core message that "everything is connected." In graduate school Snead began to work with specimens from field guides, grouping frogs, fish, etc. together on the basis of shared traits. Poison Connection is a spare work depicting four different pairs of poisonous frogs on a brushed, acid green background. When isolated, this group represents an elemental part of what Snead refers to as the universal order. As Snead dissects and analyzes the components of this universal order, he also seems to be dissecting his own work in order to take another look at his painterly beginnings.