July 16 - October 16, 2016 Armstrong Gallery This exhibit, pulled from the Museum's permanent collection of contemporary American watermedia, features eighteen works by artist Donald Holden. Holden works primarily in watercolor and exclusively paints landscapes that are intentionally small scale because he "finds a special magic in small pictures."
Nearly all of his subjects are pulled from places he's visited - Lake Powell, the Maine coast - or his own backyard in the Hudson River valley. Although the paintings are based on actual locations, he never paints on location but instead, recreates his memory of the landscape once he has returned to the studio. He says that "Painting from memory distills what you've seen. The mind edits out everything that's not essential. You leave out all the distractions, all the minor details. You focus on the big shapes, the major elements. If you're lucky, you get to the essence of something."