Eager to push into new territory, to explore the line between land and sky, heaven and earth, Gregory has amplified the scale of his works, doubling them in size, moving from panel to canvas in his current exhibition. While the show is entitled “Town and Country,” and the manifest con... Read more
Eager to push into new territory, to explore the line between land and sky, heaven and earth, Gregory has amplified the scale of his works, doubling them in size, moving from panel to canvas in his current exhibition. While the show is entitled “Town and Country,” and the manifest content of each work is that line between heaven and earth, it is the underlying content, the metaphor that is most important in this new body of work, the balance between beauty, hope and despair; the loneliness of a starlit sky; the poetic and often pregnant sensation that is present where the horizon meets the sky in a way that does not address literal separation from earth. Gregory was inspired by the poetry in the songs of Bob Dylan, two in particular: “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” and “Boots of Spanish Leather.” “Hollis Brown” speaks of a failed homestead with the death of a farmer and his family, and yet ends on the transcendent note of rebirth; “Spanish Leather” speaks of the separation of two lovers and what is most important in life. In metaphorical fashion, Gregory uses the large new format of oil on canvas to explore some of life’s large mysteries.
