Avalanche of Paint
Gary Buch
Amidst Mont Blanc, oil on panel, 60” x 48”
December 16, 2021 - February 5, 2022
Opening Reception: December 16, 5-7 pm
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee / I seem as in a trance sublime and strange / To muse on my own separate fantasy / My own, my human mind, which passively / Now renders and receives fast influencings / Holding an unremitting interchange / With the clear universe of things around
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mont Blanc
Gary Buch: CV
Avalanche of Paint features 17 stunning alpine scenes in various media (oil on panel, watercolor, and graphite) by Gary Buch. Buch, a 1984 Skowhegan participant and Marguerite Zorach scholar, is very much a “painter’s painter”; his handling of media is stirring and masterful. These works -- at times bold, muscular, graphic, and imposing, and at others, delicate, poetic and elusive -- are at all times notable for their beauty, and an awed sense of mystery. And, in the case of the oil paintings, a certain boldness - in terms of palette, scale, and gesture, as well as in the artist’s thick and luscious application of paint.
My painting process is a response to witnessing massive glacial recession amidst global climate change. Devolving mountain beauty illustrated by an erosion of paint. My work emerges from a lifestyle that uploads alpine and forest imagery. My interest lies in the struggle to arrive at a sustainable image, abandoning its mounting history, leaving a sense of insight and possibilities. Mapping the essence of mountains without illustration, but rather a portraiture of immersion in the mountain process, akin to ideoplastic rendering or what is known versus what is seen. Physically, painting aims to make sense of life. The art is of building an image just shy of a goal only to endure the provocation of a new direction. The inert pile of paint mounds the floor until the surviving material speaks of a new believable image complete with its own sense of history that I can finally trust. The construction of an image leaves hints of locations buried in the legacy of the process. I am not seeking comfort or compliance, but rather insight on how to structure, anchor and ultimately live my life.
~ Gary Buch
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