—–> Saturday, August 24th, 2013 @ 5:00pm
Screening of a ‘Conversation with Peter Acheson’
In unedited video footage American painter Peter Acheson discusses his love of and philosophical approach to painting. Viewers are given an intimate look into his studio located in New York State’s pastoral Hudson Valley. Acheson will not be present at the screening, however This Red Door encourages a post-screening discussion about some of the ideas put forth by this prolific and dedicated artist.
“After some weeks of not painting much, I was reworking an old canvas and happened to attach a piece of wood, a sort of block shape, in the upper right corner. I wrote “Iz” on it, imitating the signature of my (then) seven- year-old daughter Isabel. I liked the sound of the word and the way it rhymed with “Is”, the English word for being. The memory of the first art book I ever purchased, Eva Hesse, by Lucy Lippard shot into my mind, and I began resolving several unfinished paintings by writing “Eva Hesse” on them, in different arrangements of the letters in her name. I remembered the beautiful and tragic circumstances of her death as well as the haunting images of her late hanging rope sculptures.
It occurred to me that the eros of those images was an initiation into the mysteries of the Anima, C.G. Jungʼs term for the imaginal force of the unconscious in men. Those images made me want to be an artist. Her tough spirit, fragile femininity, and her cancer (from the use of epoxies and polyurethanes in her sculpture) constellated the triangle of sexual attraction, death, and art for me at age 20. I am happy to have remembered her influence and desire to foster my inner feminine, non rational creative freedom in her name as well as that of my (then) seven-year-old daughter Izzie.
We are as free as we allow ourselves to be.”
- Peter Acheson, August 8th, 2013
Photos from event:
