Event Information

Surface Tensions, featuring the art of oil painter Todd Bonita and encaustic painter Emma Ashby, explores the unique spaces where man, ocean, and land intersect.
The show will also include the work of mixed-media 3D sculptor David Random.
Surface Tensions opens with a reception on July 17, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Bowersock Gallery, 373 Commercial Street, Provincetown, Mass., and runs through July 29.
For both painters, the past year was spent exploring new processes and concepts, pushing their art further, Curator-Owner Steve Bowersock notes.
For Bonita, moving forward meant looking back to his childhood in the coastal town of Winthrop, Mass.
His latest series, more narrative than previously, revisits his lifelong fascination with the independent New England characters who work the sea.
"I've been fascinated by rugged, blue-collar, salty seafaring characters since a kid," Bonita says. "It's about their strength, sort of an 'Old Man of the Sea Hemingway imagery.'"
His latest series includes popular dory images and dune shacks. But the core are men of the sea, among them Ray Philips, a Maine hermit, who for Bonita epitomizes the singular breed.
Philips was a food inspector in New York City who, in 1931, tired of city life, got in a dinghy and made his way north. He landed on Manana Island, Maine, (his native state), where he lived out his life in a home he built of driftwood, till passing in 1972.
With "Ray Philip" and other works in this series, Bonita has departed somewhat from his usual approach. "I'm exploring more with my imagination and craft, and really delving into the story."
Ashby has taken new steps with her encaustic (pigmented molten beeswax) paintings as well, Bowersock says, "playing with more tools, and texture, really exploring ways to create even greater depth in her works."
Ashby's images depict coastal spaces far from the hustle of beachgoers, the quiet places where water meets rocky cliffs, and coastal plains, where wild flowers, and seagrasses are found amongst the rocks and sandy earth.
"These haunting images can appear 3-D, and luminescent," Bowersock says. "It's by far her most beautiful work."
Random's work has its own tension, steampunk, futuristic, fantastical objects, fastened from vintage and antique findings, that coalesce into a single elegant object.
Surface Tensions opens with a reception on July 17, from 7 to 9 p.m., at the Bowersock Gallery, 373 Commercial Street, Provincetown, Mass., and runs through July 29.
For both painters, the past year was spent exploring new processes and concepts, pushing their art further, Curator-Owner Steve Bowersock notes.
For Bonita, moving forward meant looking back to his childhood in the coastal town of Winthrop, Mass.
His latest series, more narrative than previously, revisits his lifelong fascination with the independent New England characters who work the sea.
"I've been fascinated by rugged, blue-collar, salty seafaring characters since a kid," Bonita says. "It's about their strength, sort of an 'Old Man of the Sea Hemingway imagery.'"
His latest series includes popular dory images and dune shacks. But the core are men of the sea, among them Ray Philips, a Maine hermit, who for Bonita epitomizes the singular breed.
Philips was a food inspector in New York City who, in 1931, tired of city life, got in a dinghy and made his way north. He landed on Manana Island, Maine, (his native state), where he lived out his life in a home he built of driftwood, till passing in 1972.
With "Ray Philip" and other works in this series, Bonita has departed somewhat from his usual approach. "I'm exploring more with my imagination and craft, and really delving into the story."
Ashby has taken new steps with her encaustic (pigmented molten beeswax) paintings as well, Bowersock says, "playing with more tools, and texture, really exploring ways to create even greater depth in her works."
Ashby's images depict coastal spaces far from the hustle of beachgoers, the quiet places where water meets rocky cliffs, and coastal plains, where wild flowers, and seagrasses are found amongst the rocks and sandy earth.
"These haunting images can appear 3-D, and luminescent," Bowersock says. "It's by far her most beautiful work."
Random's work has its own tension, steampunk, futuristic, fantastical objects, fastened from vintage and antique findings, that coalesce into a single elegant object.


Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM


Category: Arts | Visual Arts | Galleries / Art