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PRESS RELEASE Announcing An Exhibition of Paintings and Prints “Homage to White: Explorations of Form and Emptiness” by Henry C. Finney at The Los Alamos Unitarian Church
An exhibition of abstract oil paintings and monotypes by Henry C. Finney will open in Los Alamos on January 5, 2010 and extend through Friday, February 26. Entitled “Homage to White: Explorations of Form and Emptiness,” the show will be hung in Robinson Hall (the sanctuary) of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos at 1738 North Sage Street, next to the Masonic Temple. A reception for the artist will be held at the church on Saturday, January 9, 2010 from 3:30 - 6 p.m. at the same location. During the reception the artist will make two short informal presentations on the work and its origins. Finney explains that most of the dozen or so works to be shown articulate a dialogue in which he has long been engaged between abstract figuration, on the one hand, and its surrounding atmosphere of off-white. The white does not represent “voidness,” he explains, or ordinary space, but rather, the context of emptiness and spaciousness within which all things arise. Visually, the dialogue consists of the interplay of figuration with white areas treated as positive spaces in their own right. The pieces range in size from very large (4’ 2” x 5’ 6”) to as small as 5” x 8.” Most of the largest are painted with oil on canvas or linen, while most of the medium and small images are mixed oil media on paper. All the works are for sale, with thirty percent of the proceeds going to support the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos. Off and on, throughout his life, Finney has made art. His initial professional life as a sociologist began with completion of a Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. Then, after a career of more than 20 years of teaching and research in that field at the University of Vermont, he turned to art-making more seriously. During several extended residencies at the Vermont Studio School (modeled after the famous New York Studio School in Manhattan), he became a student of one of German abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman’s protégés named James Gahagan. In 1994 he completed a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at Pratt Institute in New York City. Much of his art hangs in various private collections across the country, including IBM’s collection in Essex Junction, Vermont. His work has also been accepted in many juried exhibitions, including in both Santa Fe and New York. Until it closed, he was represented by the Santa Fe Contemporary Art Gallery.
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