Groveland Gallery is pleased to present Near Horizons, an exhibition of new paintings by Pennsylvania artist Thomas Paquette. A Minneapolis native now living in Pennsylvania, Paquette has been exhibiting his work throughout the United States for over 25 years. He has enjoyed artist residencies at numerous prestigious programs including the American Academy in Rome, Millay Colony, Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange, three national parks, and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in Miami. Paquette’s paintings have been exhibited in nineteen U.S. Embassies on five continents. His work is part of collections across the US including the Mint Museum, Beach Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Minnesota Historical Society, Portland Museum, Erie Art Museum, Dubuque Museum of Art and numerous others.

Using small, loose brush strokes and multiple layers of paint reworked over time, Paquette creates richly colored and textured compositions that appear to glow with light. The subjects of his paintings are rooted in his many travels throughout North America and Europe. Paquette is inspired by the vastly varying landscapes of his journeys: swirling silvery rivers, tall, thick pines, sun-dappled forest paths, or the rural countryside bathed in golden sunlight. The artist explains:

“My perennial subject is the natural world because it astonishes me daily. On my only tangent from studying art in college, I studied to be a naturalist. Nature continues to be both my subject and teacher…What I found so compelling in my subject, I retell to the viewer in paint, and it may take several years of creation, destruction, and re-creation to best tell that story on the same canvas. It is only important that the painting evolves into a living talisman of the place that inspired it.”