University Gallery - University of Massachussetts
Amherst
Amherst, MA
413-545-3670
http://www.umass.edu/art/places/herter-art-gallery
Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of
Scott Prior
The University Gallery of University
of Massachusetts Amherst is honored to host Light on the Familiar: The
Paintings of Scott Prior from January 29 through March 17, 2000. The
exhibition is a retrospective selection of 45 of Prior's paintings completed
between 1971 and 
1999
and includes examples of his early surreal paintings and more recent paintings
of the people, interiors, places and objects that are most familiar to him.
Light on the Familiar was organized by the DeCordova
Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts where it was on
view last fall. An opening reception for the exhibition's showing at the
University Gallery will be held on Friday, January 28th from 5 to 7 p.m.
and the artist will be present. Scott Prior will give a slide lecture about
his work on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Gallery.
(right: Barbeque in Winter, 1998, oil on linen, 28 x 22 inches, Collection
of Leslie and Stephen Shatz)
Light
on the Familiar is the first major exhibition of
Prior's work to be presented in the Pioneer Valley, his home since 1967
when he came to Amherst to attend the University of Massachusetts. Prior
is a 1971 graduate of the University's department of art from which he received
a B.F.A in printmaking. After college he settled in the area and taught
himself to paint, finding a supportive artistic community among the so-called
"Valley Realists": Randall Deihl, Robin Freedenfeld, Gregory Gillespie,
the late Frances Cohen Gillespie and Jane Lund. As the exhibition's curator
Rachel Rosenfield Lafo suggests in her catalogue essay, the realist style
has found great acceptance in the Valley, perhaps because the area is largely
populated by writers, academics, small presses, book artists and illustrators
who are naturally receptive to literary art. (left: Sand Box and
Hollyhocks, 1980, oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches, Collection of Robert
and Esta Epstein)
Prior's early surreal paintings combine realistically painted
passages with odd and often humorous objects. The real and invented images
are rendered in minute detail, and show Prior's absorption of the techniques
and style of Renaissance painting which he combines with contemporary subject
matter. After 1980 Prior's interests turned to depicting natural phenomena
- light as it bathes or illuminates places and things, time of day, and
the change of seasons. Prior has said about his landscapes and still lifes
painted in the 1980s and 1990s that he has been "...particularly interested
in depicting solitude and light. Solitude because it can be illuminating.
And light because it is like God's voice, the way it touches and plays over
all things." Prior works from both photographs and life. After his
marriage to Nanette Vonnegut in 1981 he began to incorporate portraits of
real rather than invented people into his work. His family and their domestic
surroundings have inspired a body of work that includes the interiors, still
lifes and landscapes of his daily life. Prior captures the sense of intimacy
and tranquility that exists in the space of the everyday lives of the people
he loves.
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1999
and includes examples of his early surreal paintings and more recent paintings
of the people, interiors, places and objects that are most familiar to him.
Light on the Familiar was organized by the DeCordova
Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts where it was on
view last fall. An opening reception for the exhibition's showing at the
University Gallery will be held on Friday, January 28th from 5 to 7 p.m.
and the artist will be present. Scott Prior will give a slide lecture about
his work on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Gallery.
(right: Barbeque in Winter, 1998, oil on linen, 28 x 22 inches, Collection
of Leslie and Stephen Shatz)