Howard Scott Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the solo exhibition Marshland by FrEd Stonehouse. The show will open to the public on Thursday, 8 April and continue through May 8. The recent works that will compose the exhibition include examples of all of the artist's painting formats.
Stonehouse's art is resolutely humanist. His subjects are despairing and freakish characters cast from a motley pool. They often appear beaten down, broken, and drained of their humanity. Many of their visages bear a resemblance to Stonehouse-the artist as everyman. Most bear their lot with saintly and dignified comportment, or at least quiet resignation.
The artist stated to the writer
Thomas Connors, who was interviewing him in 2000, [My work] "does come together in a rather esoteric fashion, but I like to think there's enough narrative element there, there's enough suggestion, there's enough imagery that people can find a window into it".
"Contemporary American culture tends to privilege an approach to understanding that relies on polarizing objectivity. Things are either black or white, right or wrong, good or evil, with us or against us. We like our lines clearly drawn, and we want to know who's on what side. Americans tend to favor the concrete over the abstract in art, literature, and thought. This kind of thinking, a vestige of our Puritanical heritage, has permeated American culture since the colonies' dawn. Stonehouse's work, a potent critique of this feature of American thought and culture, offers the receptive viewer a way out of and beyond this crippling tendency by engaging our often underutilized capacity for critical thought and pitting it against polar thinking."
Fr
Ed Stonehouse began exhibiting publicly in 1982. Ten years later, he was honored with his first solo exhibition in a museum, The Madison Art Center (Wisconsin), and the show traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center [catalogue essay by Eleanor Heartney]. His work has been seen in a solo show context with regularity in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York for more than fifteen years. In 2000, the exhibition space, Inova, at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, mounted an extensive exhibition of his work. In March 2010, Stonehouse work will be part of a two man exhibition "Outside Influences" at The Gallery, University of Texas, Arlington (The Gallery at UTA). Other solo exhibitions have taken place in Berlin, Germany, Puebla, Mexico, and Rome, Italy.
