The Brush and the Pixel
Fine Art Gallery, Colby-Sawyer College, New London, NH • colby-sawyer.edu/gallery • Through December 7, 2023
Depending where you stand in Colby-Sawyer College’s art gallery, there is an expansive mountain view competing with the artwork on the walls. The college sits on a hilltop in the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region, halfway between the state capital of Concord and the Ivy League town of Hanover—prime leaf-peeping country. The gallery is located in the nearly-new Davidow Center for Art and Design, a modern yet barn-like structure that complements the small campus’ historical architecture.
The Brush and the Pixel is the gallery’s latest exhibition, showcasing the work of two alumni: Peter Noonan and Jack Tremblay. Graduating one year apart from the college’s fine arts program, they have taken their art careers in very different directions.
Noonan is an illustrator, fine artist, and cartoonist who lives in Manchester, NH. His work on display includes editorial cartoons, caricatures, portraits, still-life and abstract paintings, and illustrations from his children’s book, The Bike Bus. A subtle still life (Brush in Jar, oil on linen on panel) is arresting in its Shaker-like simplicity, depicting a pale ceramic jar holding a single paintbrush. Noonan’s other paintings include a study for a water color portrait of the late Robert Stark that hangs in the New Hampshire State House. Also included are cartoons from the “Drawn and Quartered” series, inspired by political campaigns. “There’s never a shortage of material during the New Hampshire Primary,” the artist says.
Tremblay, an art director and corporate designer in northern Vermont, uses digital techniques. His works include abstract digital collages created with found, archival, and Creative Commons images. In some compositions, design, photography, and cultural appreciation coexist in one form. The exhibit includes Winter Silence, a snowy farm-scape complete with shaggy cattle. The scene is composed of ten separate images, then finished with hand details and mechanical color treatment features in Photoshop. The bull’s furry detail is done with a stylus and digital drawing pad. Tremblay (who describes his work as “unusual art for thoughtful people”), hopes his images “invite a laugh, a thoughtful pause, or a pondering stare.”
Colby-Sawyer College’s gallery is open when the school is in session. It is closed over the holiday break, re-opening in January with an exhibition of pieces selected from the permanent collection.
— Laurie D. Morrissey