The Far is Near: Graham Dougherty & Ruth Ansel

Graham Dougherty
”We give shape to our rooms; then rooms give shape to our lives. We pass through rooms unseeing; walls, floors, ceilings, doorways become unnoticed, accepted, ordinary. It is light which transforms a commonplace enclosure into a metaphor of remembered or desired sensations. In these paintings the architectural elements become an abstracted structure of a remembered moment. Both rational thought and remembered sensations are unified. The measured proportions give stability; the color, sensuality; while the patterns of abstracted light, reasoned in their geometric forms and sensual and ambiguous in their colors, give release and relief to an moment remembered or desired.”

Ruth Ansel
“Painting for me is sensation. It is visual. The eyes perceive the colors and tones. It is a felt experience. I can feel the thickness or thinness of the paint and the tug on the brush as the paint is released to the surface of the panel. I can hear the particles of pigment as I grind them into a paste on the palette and I can hear the almost imperceptible beat as the brush connects with the panel to deliver the load. The pigments have distinct odors. Attention to these sensations leads me to a state of meditation. The result of this process is a painting which, I hope, allows the receptive viewer to experience a similar state.”

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website