Stremmel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by Dutch artist Ewoud de Groot, on view from September 10 – October 3, 2015. A rising star in contemporary wildlife art, de Groot has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States, with this event marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Nevada. The artist reception will be held Thursday, September 10, 2015 from 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Ewoud de Groot has been recognized for the refreshing perspective he brings to wildlife painting. As photorealism continues to be the prevailing mode of the genre, de Groot is not concerned with depicting all the painstaking details. Instead, the artist is concerned with conveying mood and atmosphere. He approaches his work as an ongoing experiment of color, composition, and technique, channeling traditional and contemporary masters alike. His paintings aim to find a balance and tension between the representational and the abstract, the traditional and the modern.
The artist’s familiarity with wildlife ensures that they have become his primary artistic focus. De Groot’s subjects are most often birds of the Northern Hemisphere, from Europe, Siberia, and into North America. Living in the Netherlands, he has met many of these creatures during treks throughout the Wadden Sea, a wetland known for its rich biodiversity of flora and fauna, particularly coastal birds. De Groot will often represent his subjects with accurate detail, but allow them to emerge from environments that are far more expressionistic.
Landscapes dissolve into luminous bands of color and shimmering explosions of colored shapes, with spontaneous drips and splatters of texture filling his canvases. De Groot graduated from the Art Academy Minerva and began his career illustrating nature and wildlife books before pursuing painting full time in 1999. Today, he is based out of the small coastal village Egmond aan Zee in the Netherlands. Recent exhibitions include Astoria Fine Art, Jackson Hole, WY; Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; and the 27th Annual Western Visions exhibition as the 2014 Featured Artist at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY.