| Freeport Art Museum’s Midwest Lands exhibition features works by Ellen Holtzblatt Image above: Ellen Holtzblatt, Under the Sun, oil on linen mounted on panel, 40″ x 90″ (triptych) |
| On view: September 6 – October 12, 2024 Opening Reception: September 6, 5pm – 7pm Artist Talk: September 6, 4pm Midwest Lands Freeport Art Museum 121 North Harlem Avenue Freeport, Illinois https://www.freeportartmuseum.com/exhibitions-index  |
| Ellen Holtzblatt, Dead River 2, ink on Japanese paper, 25″ x 39″ |
| This unique visual and literary art invitational focuses on farmland, rural landscapes, and the aesthetics, psychological, and emotional content of these themes. The exhibition features works by artists Dan Brinkmeier, Barry Roal Carlsen, Ellen Holtzblatt, Tom Linden, Stuart Roddy, and Mark Weller. Their pieces capture the beauty and complexity of rural life. Artist Statement My paintings and drawings explore the profound connections between the physical and spiritual world. Landscape becomes an allegory for psyche and emotion, evolution and decay. As a life-long Midwestern resident, I am especially compelled by the prairie, and feel a spiritual loss from the disappearance of so many acres of tall grasses and flowers. Both during and after my artist residency at Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, I was artistically inspired by the open prairie that abutted and was visible from my studio. In autumn, the colors were brilliant earth tones under dramatic and emotionally evocative skies. In my own yard in Chicago, my husband and I have replaced all of the grass with native plantings, attracting bees, butterflies, and birds who feed, pollinate, and nest in the environment. The series of drawings, Dead River, is motivated by my walk along the Dead River at Illinois State Beach in the early spring of 2024. There, I noticed the body of a deer in the water, trapped in tangled branches near the shore. In the drawings the deer is barely discernible, disappearing into its final resting place. Through my art, I seek to embody the power and vulnerability of mind and body, and the ever-present passage of time. |
