Kurt Herrmann: Smoke In The Hills
March 28 - April 29
Opening Reception Saturday, April 1
1 – 4 PM
Same time as Open Canopy
The Smoke In The Hills paintings are my vehicle to poke around the hills and valleys of Appalachia and see what pops up. The mountains are full of stories, songs, and skunks, but the two-legged yahoos are probably the most fun. Amish, rednecks, crusty octogenarians, and burning bears collide to create strange bedfellows and tableaus. I’m riffing on the inhabitants, the landscape, but ultimately myself. Sometimes what I stumble upon is real, sometimes invented – it doesn’t really matter. The paintings are real, the rest is a mystery.
Kurt Herrmann ( b. 1972, Lock Haven, USA ) is a painter from the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania who does both figurative and abstract work, but above all is a colourist at heart. Two of his recent shows were featured in Time Out Chicago and the Philadelphia Inquirer, with recent shows in Tasmania ( Penny Contemporary ) , New Orleans (Octavia Gallery), Auckland (12 Gallery ), Philadelphia ( James Oliver Gallery), and Charlotte ( Sozo Gallery). His work is in prominent collections across the US, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, including Capitol One Corporate Headquarters (Wilmington, DE), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY), and Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). Recent commissions include large work for Hotel Del Coronado (San Diego, CA), and a line of beer labels for Elk Creek Café + Aleworks (Millheim, PA). Although his exhibition schedule is increasingly international, Herrmann’s rural Pennsylvania roots continue to influence his work. “I’m very aware of the fact that even if a painting was initially inspired by something exotic, or an extremely personal event on the other side of the planet, all my work is filtered through my studio in the hills of Appalachia,” he explains. “The colours, silence, space, seasons, landscape, even the rednecks impact everything I make. It’s inescapable.”
