EXHIBITION: September 1st - Oct 1st
Reception: Sat Sept 2nd 5-7pm

i.e. is looking forward to celebrating the legacy of painter John Schaefer whose beautiful oil and wax color field paintings are accompanied by hand carved stones of his long-time compadre and fellow river dweller, Michael Clough.

Being a recent transplant (16 years) to the Skagit Valley I have slowly gained familiarity with the particular art history of the region. As rich as the farm fields and as varied as the bird life it sustains and nurtures us. Painters and poets were drawn here for that sustenance and still are.
I remember the names John Schaefer and Michael Clough from Seattle exhibits...Foster White, Manolides, Traver Gallery and more, decades ago. At i.e. we had exhibited Clough's hand carved stones several years ago with Allen Moe's work and it is a pleasure to have his new work with us. The stones are found and held and worked with very rudimentary tools for months at a time. They are a throwback to the primitive, perhaps even Brut concept of art making, close to the land, and true to their integral nature.They certainly invoke that Asian aesthetic that was infused in the work of the Mystic Artists of the Northwest.
John Schaefer's paintings are of the same ilk. His canvases glow with the layered oil and cold wax due to the intensely hued under paintings that he would cover with grey tones and pure geometrical structure. They are reminiscent of Rothko and Albers in their luminosity, and Stella in the repeated patterns. Schaefer was a color field painter of great sensitivity. It has been a revelation to become acquainted with these paintings. -Margy Lavelle, Owner, i.e.