Gallery Opening on Friday, January 7, 2021, 5-8 PM
Exhibiting in the Main Gallery through the month of January

THE SECRET GARDEN SERIES:
What’s Old is New Again
HEATHER STOCKTON

The Secret Garden Series is an ongoing body of work, which supposes that each image glimpses a garden of secrets, and that garden is our mind, populated by the flora and fauna of our consciousness. The canvases revisit my earlier exploration in color as a medium for concretizing the complexities of the mind. Some canvases juxtapose white negative space between moments of spectral shades of color to represent the ways our consciousness flows between different stages of knowing, understanding, and remembering. Other canvases feature more densely colored spaces, not unlike moments of hyperfocus, revealing the ways our minds tend to circle back around—in a sense, reviving ideas to make what’s old, new again. Like a garden, growth in the canvas depends on recycling various forms of organic material, such as the incorporation of vintage papers (usually floral based wrapping paper), journal entries, pieces of my older artworks. However, the balance between these elements is delicate, almost fragile, easily threatened by oversaturation. The balance I want to strike draws a parallel between the garden and the mind to suggest that like the environment, our minds can be easily overwhelmed without balance. The richness of color and layering speaks to the intensity of emotion and thought that can seem to almost breach our efforts to shore up the boundaries used to tend our personal gardens; however, the finished piece ultimately sees the intensity of beauty in spite (and almost without knowledge) of the complexity fueling the fertility. Like our memories, these pieces use layering to concretize how our minds tend to scaffold, drawing from a range of experiences to create connections that ultimately create the beauty of lives lived.

Beautiful Wild Montana
NANCY FITCH

Nancy Fitch is a retired Missoula family physician who spent 10+ years in Africa, helping countries build their own capacity to treat HIV. Since her teen years, her passion has been drawing and painting. She studied at Rhode Island School of Design briefly during college, and practiced her art whenever she had time and energy. After retiring a few years ago, she re-kindled her love of painting, focusing on Montana’s pristine nature. Nancy tries to capture the ethereal fleeting light and contrasts in nature, particularly flowers, weather, clouds, water, and reflections. She loves the transparency, accessibility, and hues of watercolor. Nancy loves Missoula’s North Hills and walks her dogs there most days.