Vermont
Eric Aho
Altered Book:
Marsden Hartley, Gail R. Scott (1988)
Painted book cover with interpretation of Mardsen Hartley’s “Robinhood Cove” (1938).
Artist Statement
Painting the natural world extends so many wonderous experiences of connectivity while, at the same time, reminds that it’s fundamental concern is one of disjunction and disruption. At the threshold between those forces of an observed reality and the resolution of an invented world are infinite arrangements and possibilities for painting, and clues to the enduring modern puzzle of figuration and abstraction. Hartley is one of our artist forebears who puzzled over similar concerns. Here, I've painted my own version of Marsden Hartley’s Robinhood Cove (1938) over a monograph of his collected works from the 1980s. The “Re-cover" project became a vehicle of both connection (earlier this summer I went to Robinhood Cove in Georgetown, Maine to work), and, more significantly, of disruption—only part of Hartley’s name remains visible on the spine of the otherwise permanently closed book.
Short Bio
Eric Aho was born in Melrose, Massachusetts in 1966 and grew up in rural New Hampshire. Aho joins historical research, personal inquiry, and a close reading of the landscape together with delight in experiencing the natural world reinvigorating what it means to paint the landscape today. Aho lives and works in Saxtons River, Vermont; DC Moore Gallery in New York represents his work. On most days he walks with Elli the dog to the studio on the other side of the village.