Classical oil painting

Classical oil painting
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The exhibition, organized by the TMA, opens to the public Sunday, Jan. 4 and continues through Feb. 8, 2009 in the Museum’s North Gallery about classical oil painting. Admission to both exhibitions is free.

Lucid Dreams spotlights selections from the collection of Dr. James and Norma Cotton of Tyler, longtime TMA patrons who have been avid followers of Kuch’s work over the last two decades.

Michael Kuch (b. 1965) grew up in northern Vermont and began drawing in pen-and-ink at age 11, leading to his first solo exhibition before he was even a teenager. He remained self-taught until he became a pupil of Leonard Baskin at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., studying life-drawing in the classical oil painting tradition. For several years after receiving his B.A., Kuch continued to work closely with Baskin, printing etchings in color for Baskin's Gehenna Press. In 1994, Kuch started his own Double Elephant Press with the publication of a book of frog etchings titled A Plague on Your House. A recent book project, Apocalypse Clocks, was a “millennial retrospective of the end of time”; and in 2002, he produced the book Falling to Earth in reaction to the events of Sept. 11.

The TMA exhibition features complete editions of A Plague on Your House and Apocalypse Clocks, in addition to earlier book creations including Lemon Descending and Amour and Armor, as well as more recent work such as Séance for a Minyan (Kuch’s collaboration with late U.S. Poet Laureate Anthony Hecht) and 2005’s Disaster of Love – A Defense of Delilah.

“Michael’s work is endlessly intriguing because of his ability to weave fantasy and familiarity together to plumb the depths of the human condition,” TMA Director Kimberley Bush Tomio said. “He uses classical oil painting symbols from nature as well as biblical and mythological narratives across a broad range of media in his storytelling – everything from monotype and etchings to ink, watercolor, and oil paintings. Michael is a singular talent whose work we are delighted to have on exhibition at the Museum.”

Kuch’s limited-edition books of etchings are housed in collections including the Library of Congress, Yale University, Columbia University, the British Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his poetry has been published in periodicals including The Nation. He splits time between his apartment and classical oil painting near Ground Zero in Manhattan and his studio in Hadley, Mass.