Catamount Arts is pleased to announce an exhibit of Amy Ragus: Fractured Visions I, an exhibition of photo collage that will be on view in Catamount Art’s Main Gallery from August 7 through September 11, 2015.
About the exhibition: Amy Ragus mixes nature and artifice by merging numerous photographic images taken of an individual scene to create surreal landscapes that dare viewers to enter. For her, digital manipulation is a tool not to conceal blemishes but to open up vistas of woods, waterfalls, and mountains. At first glance, Lucid, Walden Woods (2011) generates visual discomfort and uncertainty by contrasting the delicate green of a spring afternoon against the ominous darkness of a partially hewn tree in the foreground. Long shadows rake across the bottom of the picture plane, while the sky is a pieced-together patchwork of spliced blue and white. Ragus considers herself a painter who uses photo fragments as brushstrokes on a larger field.
About the Artist: Amy Ragus has exhibited in one-person exhibitions and group shows both nationally and abroad. Trained as a painter at Wellesley College (BA) and Columbia University (MFA), she turned to photography in the 1980’s. Ragus is a three time MacDowell Fellow and has been artist-in-residence in Gros Morne National Park (Newfoundland), Yosemite National Park (California), Sitka Center for Art & Ecology (Oregon), Hermitage Artist Retreat (Florida), Moulin a Nef/Virginia Center for the Arts (Auvillar, France), and elsewhere. The artist has had one-person exhibitions at The Fruitlands Museum (Harvard, MA), The French Cultural Center (Boston), Thoreau Farm Trust (Concord, MA), Highfield Hall (Falmouth, MA), The Cummings Arts Center (Connecticut College), Bentley College (Waltham, MA), Babson College (Wellesley, MA), Regis College (Weston, MA), The Deans Gallery at MIT (Cambridge, MA), The Art Complex Museum (Duxbury, MA), and The Tsongas Gallery at Walden Pond (with Thoreau Scholar Tom Blanding). She was a founding partner and Vice President of Fine Arts Express, Inc. (1978-1994) and an Assistant Professor of Art at Regis College (1995-2002). Ragus was born in New York City, the daughter of parents who met at Cooper Union Art School. She currently lives in a small farmhouse in the woods of southeast Massachusetts. For more information about the artist and work in this show, see http://www.amyragus.com.