Our “inner landscape” — the essence of our existence, the being, the soul — is as vast, colorful, and panoramic as a landscape of mountains, trees and sky.
To experience both at painter Ben Gibson’s current Erie Art Museum exhibit “Out InScapes” is a gift to give yourself during this holiday season.
Gibson is known for his compound, metaphorical paintings, his “inscapes,” which he describes as “images where the subjective and objective play equal roles in uncovering an expressive entity.”
A handful of “inscapes” are on display — mysterious, muted, dreamlike visions that tap into universal concepts but encourage viewer input and imagination.
Among the oil paintings and charcoal drawings are several that place less-than-stately trees front and center. These specimens — whether twisted, denuded or a stump — exist within bleak landscapes that are elegant and strangely attractive in their quietude.
I was especially moved by the timely “Remnant,” a charcoal study of