VERO BEACH — The Vero Beach Museum of Art’s exhibition “CYCLE OF CHANGE: Tom Nakashima’s Treepile Paintings” will be on view through June 3 in the Museum’s Schumann Gallery.
This free of charge and not-to-be-missed offering has been fascinating visitors since the show opened in mid-February. These monumental art works, the largest being Nakashima’s Westwood Road Nocturne at 110 x 165 inches, are produced using the artist’s signature technique and combine painting and collage.
Nakashima’s technique is demonstrated in a video presentation that is also on view in the gallery along with his art.
Nakashima spent twenty-one years making art in the urban environment of Washington, D.C. before deciding to move to rural Virginia. There he happened upon the gigantic pile of tree trunks and limbs that inspired him to create his first treepile painting “Stewart’s Sticks” (on view in the exhibition).
In these paintings, Nakashima reminds us of the power of natural forms to take on metaphorical meaning, to become something in our minds that goes beyond their usual meanings in everyday experience. He creates an almost magical fusion of subtle colors and textures with twisted, tangled, and knotted forms.
The resulting art, like the artist himself, seems to combine the Western landscape tradition with an Eastern approach to natural subjects that seems almost religious.The resulting works of art are imaginative, technically accomplished, and beautifully symbolic.
“He begins with nature, piles of dead branches silhouetted against the ground or sky, and transforms them into monumental compositions redolent with meaning,” explained Joann Moser, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, describing this series of canvases.
The award-winning artist has received numerous awards and fellowships. His work can be found in the permanent collections of The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, L’Hermitage, and numerous other public collections.
Nakashima is a professor emeritus of Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He has also served as the William S. Morris Eminent Scholar in Art at Augusta State University in Georgia.
The Vero Beach Museum of Art is located at 3001 Riverside Park Dr. in Vero Beach.
For more information about this and other exhibitions, classes, and programs, visit www.VeroBeachMuseum.org.
