The Gunnar Nordstrom Gallery is pleased to introduce the new works by Northwest Painters Jane Aukshunas and Don Tiller.
Staying true to our gallery's direction of playful and whimsical work, Aukshunas and Tiller are natural participants.
The soothing and regenerative power of nature has had a profound influence in the work of Aukshunas throughout her life. She finds a deep sense of serenity in the natural world and as an artist, she attempts to convey that by capturing the serenity that is so often lacking in our frantic mobile phone and email culture. Many of her works are displayed in hospitals and the offices of health professionals which leads one to believe that she has captured that essence of tranquility and that the feeling tones in her art help to soothe people's emotions.
New to the Gallery, Aukshunas lives in the Northwest in a region with diverse terrain that is rich with what may be the widest variety of crops in the world. Consequently, there is much in her environment to inspire the landscapes she creates.
Imbued at once with both a lush sensuality and an edgy geometry, her colorful, graphic landscapes hearken back to the 1930s' mid western regionalist style of such artists as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. Her work has been likened to "Grant Wood on acid." In her use of color, and she identifies with the early 1900s European artists who were dubbed the Fauves (wild beasts) whose leading member was Henri Matisse. Other artists who influence her on an ongoing basis include Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Carr, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Wanda Ga'g, and Northwest contemporary Susan Bennerstrom.
Residing on the Olympic Peninsula, Don Tiller is intrigued with the imprint left on the landscape when touched by mankind. With bold colors and simple shapes, he has given this new group of paintings his interpretation of man's attempt to initiate order in nature. Natural chaos provides interest balanced with geometric repetition.
This recent body of work is primarily composed of interesting shapes and bold colors of sensual landscapes and new forms in Urban Life.
The paintings are snippets of warped remembrances allowing you a glimpse of the things
he has seen and the places he has been. When someone quips "I think I've been there" or
"I know where that is" he knows the connection between creator and viewer has been made.
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