'American Sublime: Paintings of Everyday Places and Ordinary Lives' by Peter J Damon, July 23 through August 20

   Join us Saturday, July 23, from 6 to 8 pm, as we host an opening reception for 'American Sublime', featuring recent work by gallery co-owner and resident artist Peter J Damon. Enjoy complementary adult refreshments, meet and chat with the artist, and socialize with other local art enthusiasts. Free and open to the public. True Grit Art Gallery is located at 38 Center St. in Middleborough, Massachusetts. This show will be posted online, here at our website,  beginning Tuesday, July 26th.

Artist's Statement:

 In aesthetics, there is a concept known as the Sublime. A sublime experience purports to induce an exalted, euphoric state in its subject, brought about at  first by a visceral, and then a reflective response to sensory input. The experience can lead the subject to feel as though they were part of a greater-whole and in touch with a mystery beyond the everyday phenomenal world of experience. I suspect that many artists and  admirers of art have had at least some level of this experience at one time or another.

   Painting, for me, is like a meditative exercise. When I’m inspired to paint something, it is not only the objects, ideas, or scenes themselves that draw my attention. Equally, or perhaps even more relevant, is the particular arrangement of lines, colors, shapes and values that can elicit an experience of sublimity within. In these moments I sense there is an infinite array of aesthetic order— a unity of harmony and discord— to be observed in the world. It is this capacity that humans have to grasp this sense of order and infinity  that is super-sensible— that is beyond the capacity of any other creature on earth. It points to something that transcends empirical observation. It is indicative of an ultimate reality— something eternal, something metaphysical.

   It is the pursuit of this eternal essence that gives so much meaning and purpose to my life as an artist. We live in a world of ceaseless change. Time destroys everything we can ever come to know. What holds it  all up? What lies behind the veil? My idea of an American Sublime involves the freedom to explore these questions in an increasingly secular and technological age— to forge one's own spiritual path in life. It involves striving to capture, in paint, the timeless values of individual liberty, work, humility, authenticity, duty, family, sacrifice, culture and tradition in everyday places and objects.— P.J.D