Painting Atelier: Oct 19 at 6:30 PM

$45 Members / $65 Non-members



AnnePlaisance

Gallery Opening and Artist Talk September 20, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Gallery Opening and Artist Talk: Free and open to the public, RSVP strongly recommended. Complimentary refreshments will be served.


Painting Workshop: The Art of Recreating October 19, 6.30 PM to 9:00 PM

Members $45 - Non Members: $65. (Easels, canvas, brushes and acrylic paint provided) Alastair Dacey will walk through the process of recreating Kuhn’s work, describing his series of portraits. He will then lead the attendees to pick up the brush and try it themselves.

There is nothing like the task of re-creation to prompt an eye for detail. Trying to pair textures and colors with materials and figure out the cut and drape of a dress or how a hat should fit provoked the refrain ‘…my, he leaves a lot to the imagination.


About Alastair Dacey

AlastairDacey
Alastair Dacey received formal training at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ingbretson Studios in New Hampshire, and Cecil Studios in Florence, Italy. Since 2010, he has lived and worked in the Portsmouth, NH area. A skilled landscape and still life painter, Alastair focuses most intently on the portrait and human figure. His love of observation, precise draughtsmanship, and the painterly search for values and color put his working methods squarely within the nineteenth-century aesthetic tradition. He is an active painting instructor, teaching workshops and accepting residencies and private students. Alastair’s work is in noteworthy collections including the St. Botolph Club and the New Hampshire State House.


As a painter, I have been impressed with Kuhn’s pared down designs and direct interpretation of forms and detail. I am sympathetic when he describes one of his paintings as, “A lump of weighted form… the universal substance of art…Cezanne chopped it up to see how it was made; his followers fool with the pieces. Here it is whole again." I am fascinated by how Kuhn saw the face paint, costumes and eyes of his solitary, often aloof subjects. In many of his best portraits you don’t just see, you encounter someone.

To learn more, visit Alastair's website: https://alastairdacey.com/

 

About Walt Kuhn

AnnePlaisance
Kuhn's career is bookended by his 1901 trip to study in Paris and by his final New York exhibition in 1948 at the famous French firm of Durand-Ruel. In between he helped organize the Armory Show, introducing Europe’s avant-garde art movements to an unprepared and duly shocked American public. He depicts his elaborately clad showgirls and clowns with the stayed formality and solidity of an early Greek and Etruscan sculpture. They peer out from behind “impersonal masks of make-up” unfazed, and as one critic put it: “there is an emotional strength…a somewhat sad facial expression coupled with a sense of classical composure… .”








About Masks

Kuhn
Masks have a long history of use that goes well beyond trickery, from protection to disguise, religious ceremony and spirit invocation to entertainment and intimidation - to name just a few. For ancient Greek theatre, masks encouraged the actors’ transformation into character and allowed for one actor to play numerous roles. “Masks do not hide the persona, but reveal… and liberate the lower tendencies of the true personality of the one who wears the mask” suggests Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant in the Dictionnaire des Symboles.
Image source: metmuseum.org


Gallery Opening Sponsor

Thank you to the following for their support of the opening:

Upcoming Events

Entertainment

Poetry Contest

Time to use our typewriter

From May 23, 2023 To Jun 23, 2023

We invite parents and children to gather in the children's room of our library for a magical story time in French!

Read More
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 4:00 PM To 5:30 PM

The French Library is pleased to welcome you for an afternoon of cartoons in French with our sponsor TV5 Monde.

Read More
Festival

Marché d'été

French Summer Market

Saturday, June 10, 2023 10:00 AM To 4:00 PM

Sip and shop your way through our line-up of local artisans and vendors at our first edition of French Summer Market. Members get in free!

Read More