THE FAR IS NEAR
Graham Dougherty & Ruth Ansel

January 5 - 31, 2019

Opening Reception:
Friday, January 11 | 7 - 9 PM

Graham Dougherty 
”We give shape to our rooms; then rooms give shape to our lives. We pass through rooms unseeing; walls, floors, ceilings, doorways become unnoticed, accepted, ordinary. It is light which transforms a commonplace enclosure into a metaphor of remembered or desired sensations. In these paintings the architectural elements become an abstracted structure of a remembered moment. Both rational thought and remembered sensations are unified. The measured proportions give stability; the color, sensuality; while the patterns of abstracted light, reasoned in their geometric forms and sensual and ambiguous in their colors, give release and relief to an moment remembered or desired.”

Graham Dougherty attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His paintings have been exhibited regionally since 1962 in both museums and commercial galleries and his work can be found in both corporate and private collections. Dougherty maintains a studio at The Delaware Contemporary.

Ruth Ansel
“Painting for me is sensation. It is visual. The eyes perceive the colors and tones. It is a felt experience. I can feel the thickness or thinness of the paint and the tug on the brush as the paint is released to the surface of the panel. I can hear the particles of pigment as I grind them into a paste on the palette and I can hear the almost imperceptible beat as the brush connects with the panel to deliver the load. The pigments have distinct odors. Attention to these sensations leads me to a state of meditation. The result of this process is a painting which, I hope, allows the receptive viewer to experience a similar state.”

Ruth Ansel has an M.F.A. from George Washington University. She has been devoted to exploring the medium of egg tempera painting for nearly 40 years. She works in studio 2M at The Delaware Contemporary.

Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery