Event
Charles Eckart: Adventures of the Optic NervePost an Event »
Seager Gray Gallery
September 16 - October 16, 2016Info
108 Throckmorton Ave Mill Valley, CA 94941 Google Map »Reception
September 17, 2016 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Charles Eckart, Scorcher, 2013, oil on canvas, 24 x 20"
Seager Gray Gallery presents Adventures of the Optic Nerve, a one person exhibition of works by artist Charles Eckart in Mill Valley, CA, September 16 to October 16, 2016. There will be a reception for the artist on Saturday, September 17 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm open to the public.
The paintings of Charles Eckart are a celebration of the expressive powers of pure pigment. The artist grew up in Yosemite across the meadow from the Ahwahnee Hotel and in view of Half Dome. His early everyday visual experience was of vistas that can take your breath away. It instilled in him a visual bar that was high from the beginning. Eckart began painting early and found inspiration in the Yosemite Museum’s collection of works by Thomas Hill, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran honing his skills in both draughtmanship and painting, but found that just getting it down, or replicating what he saw did not quite get at the more metaphysical sensation – the awe that was inspired by the surroundings. For Eckart, it was a metaphysical preoccupation that was accompanied by a more physical sensation – that retinal vibration in the eyes that accompanies looking at something indefinably moving. Fast-forward through a solid arts education at the University of the Pacific and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles followed by a stint as an award winning Art Director at the prestigious advertising firm McCann Erickson. Eckart’s early works were showcases for his prodigious abilities in drawing and paint – commuter drawings of his observations in the city and precise rendering of his San Francisco environment, but he became bored. All of the creative work was done in the planning up front. Already lured by his fascination with the power of the pigment itself, he surrendered to a more interactive process. The result was a series of winged figures rising out of amorphous backgrounds of color - the figures often already exhibiting the structure and depth created by applying paint upon paint in variations of colors that became the signature characteristic of his painting. Eckart’s virtuosity as a painter stems from an intimate understanding and love of his material. He knows how oil paint behaves and is continually finding ways of pushing the boundaries of what he can do with it. In his words, he has learned to “listen to the paint.” The layering of color upon color provides the viewer with an invitation to explore sensations created by rich pure generous applications of color. The artist modulates that experience by laying cool against warm, cool against cool and warm against warm often using as much as 20 pounds of paint, creating a work that is as much “object” as “picture.”