Golden: Emma Ballou Solo Exhibition

Art & Light Gallery is pleased to present “Golden”, a solo exhibition of work by Emma Ballou (Buxton, M.E.) launching on the Art & Light website and in the gallery at 10:00 AM (EST) on Tuesday, September 30 with an opening reception on Friday, October 3 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM.

Working in acrylic and oil paint Emma Ballou captures the soft, luminescent quality of light that she is most visually attracted to in the landscape. Ballou’s ethereal and moody paintings are influenced by her poor eyesight, making her unique perspective of the world more about feeling than seeing. Her slightly-out-of-focus landscape paintings offer viewers an understanding of how light and dark shape our experience of the natural world. The work highlights the vivid, fleeting details of the golden hour, like the halos that outline blooming milkweed and queen anne’s lace and the sparkles of light that make individual blades of grass look like strands of gold.

In “Golden” Emma Ballou examines dusk, which she considers “the most tender and flourishing time of day.” The word golden signifies a perfect middle ground, a point of ideal balance. It is this intersection of light and dark, this precise tipping point, that creates a striking moment of clarity for the artist. Ballou states, “When the day is done and starts slipping into night the golden hour appears. This normal daily occurrence has a surprising abundance of crescendo energy. Like the grand finale of a fireworks display on the fourth of July. But even as this golden moment starts you can sense its end. Day slides into night, signaling that it’s finally time to rest and release the day’s energy so you can begin again tomorrow.”