Running from September 20, 2016 to October 22, 2016 in the Holzwasser Gallery

This exhibition explores the painting practices of two NAC students whose work is anchored in the academic disciplines of their former careers. For Scheibler, articulating abstract concepts was at the core of her career as a philosophy professor. Now, through her colorful compositions, she explores new ways of externalizing and expanding upon those ideas. For Thompson, the abstract scientific principles that were central to his career as a medical researcher have long fueled his interest in non-representational art. Together, the exhibition examines the personal histories of the artists and asks how science, memory and language can inform and inspire abstract art.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Irwin E. Thompson has had a life-long interest in art. He received his MD from Glasgow Medical School in 1960, and throughout his medical and academic career, he continued to paint and write poetry. In the late 1980s he began attending various classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Mass College of Art and Design; and the Art New England Residential Summer Painting Workshops. His work has been shown throughout the Greater Boston area at venues including the Adelson Gallery, the Danforth Museum, the Nielsen Gallery, Zeitgeist Gallery, and others. His work is in several public and private collections including Brigham and Women’s Hospital Rehab Center, The Boston Children’s Hospital, and Hebrew Senior Life, Boston. He has published two books of his paintings with corresponding poems titled “My Parallel Universe” (2015) and “Memories & Milestones” (2007).

“Painting and writing poetry has become a natural way for me to celebrate pivotal moments in my life and express my deepest feelings through words, color, form, and texture. I’m drawn to non-representational art, since abstraction depends on a relationship with our inner being, our conscious memories and our subconscious self. In this particular body of work, I have been thinking a lot about the practices of the English painter Howard Hodgkin who talks of his work as memories of his feelings.” – Irwin E. Thompson

Ingrid Scheibler received an interdisciplinary BA in anthropology and religion from the University of Virginia before obtaining her PhD from Trinity College at Cambridge University. In 1991, she was awarded the Sarah Smithson Research fellowship in the Arts at Newnham College, Cambridge University. She went on to become an Assistant Professor at Boston College with a focus on aesthetics and feminist philosophy. Scheibler has published numerous articles in academic journals and one book titled “Gadamer: Between Heidegger and Habermas”. Since 2001, she has focused on pursuing her interests in art and museum culture, studying at SMFA, Boston and the New Art Center, as well as consulting with the LEF Foundation and interning at the List Visual Art Center at MIT. Her work has been shown throughout the Greater Boston area at venues such as the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Newton Cultural Center, and Eclipse Gallery.

“As a former philosophy professor and writer, I am mesmerized by the process of painting. It occurs without explicit recourse to language or concept, yet requires discernment and articulation that is just as demanding as any academic task. In an increasingly specialized world, the serious mystery of this process is a wonder.” – Ingrid Scheibler