Eagle Times Staff
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Artists Mishel Valenton and Benedict Scheuer share a passion for using drawing and painting to capture the sensory essence of nature and everyday experiences, and on Thursday, July 11, they’ll join Curator Maria Stabio to discuss their work, which is currently on view at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC). Their exhibit, “Personal Nature,” runs through Oct. 19.
The art talk takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Zoom and Facebook Live. Admission is free, but advance registration is required to access the Zoom link. Visit brattleboromuseum.org to register. For accessibility questions and requests, email [email protected] or call 802-257-0124 x101.
Valenton and Scheuer each “delight in all sensations visual and tactile,” according to Stabio. Valenton works in oil paints, gouache, and digital media, creating colorful, expressive portraits that represent “past, present and future projections of self,” she said. Scheuer is a gardener, as well as a painter, and he places the vibrant colors and shapes of landscape mostly onto silk surfaces. Both artists are motivated by “an ethos of introspective curiosity,” said Stabio, and by the “gratification derived from the immediacy of expression.”
Valenton was born in Manila, migrated to the U.S. as a young adult, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia. Her paintings reflect her Filipino upbringing and American immigrant existence, depicting a personal history as well as everyday human experiences. She invites the viewer into an intimate and fluid emotional landscape, showing vulnerability, disappointment, hopefulness and other everyday states of mind.
“Whatever feeling or desire I am inhabiting in that place where I have a brush in my hand, that’s what I’m painting,” Valenton said.
Scheuer is based in Columbus, Ohio, and treats drawing and painting as methods of devotion. His process is both improvisational and carefully intentional, a way to connect the body and mind to the natural world.
“I get the studio ready, I meditate, then I work,” Scheuer said. “What is depicted and the spirit with which it’s conveyed — color, shape, quality of line — shifts from day to day.”
Scheuer’s silk pieces, in particular, embody that fluidity, literally flowing with each subtle breeze and blurring the lines between artistic object and the surrounding environment.
Scheuer’s work has been exhibited at galleries in New York City, Columbus, Detroit, St. Paul, and Akron. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Yale University and an MFA in Visual Art from Ohio State University.
Valenton has shown her work in group exhibitions across the U.S. and in a solo exhibition at Sense Gallery in Washington, D.C. She holds a BFA from the University of the Philippines.
Stabio is a Filipino-American painter and occasional curator based in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. She has curated gallery exhibitions in New York City, and her own work has recently been shown at galleries in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
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