Catamount Arts is pleased to announce the opening of Jon Imber: Curious Narrative, an exhibition of paintings by the late Boston painter Jon Imber. On view in the main gallery from March 27-May 10, 2015, the show opened in conjunction with the Green Mountain Film Festival’s presentation of the documentary Imber’s Left Hand, which was created as part of the Maine Masters series by filmmaker Richard Kane. The film records the artist’s heroic struggle with ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Together the exhibition and film represent Catamount Art’s unique ability to integrate film and visual arts programming in ways that expand an understanding of both.
About the exhibition Jon Imber: Curious Narrative
Since the beginning, artist Jon Imber used painting to explore a kind of curious narrative recommended by his mentor Philip Guston, a larger-than-life Expressionist painter who taught at Boston University. Working from memory and imagination, Imber concentrated on monumental and symbolic portraits at the start of his career before embracing en plein air landscape painting that was inspired by such masters as Paul Cezanne, Marsden Hartley and Willem DeKooning. However, when diagnosis of the debilitating disease ALS made it impossible for Imber to work safely outdoors, he returned to his studio to create portraits of friends and family who made it possible for him to keep working right up until his death in April 2014. Portraits created at the end of Imber’s life reveal a sharp visual intelligence that no longer relied on facility, making these among the most interesting and expressive works of his career.
About the film Imber’s Left Hand
The documentary Imber’s Left Hand tells the story of an artist’s courageous and sometimes darkly humorous response to a death sentence imposed by a diagnosis of ALS. The film traces adaptations that the painter Jon Imber was forced to make, switching from painting from his right hand to his left, and then to both hands as his degenerative condition progresses. Adversity only makes him more determined to paint, and paint he does: working up until a few days before his death in April, 2014. Also featured in the film is Imber’s wife and fellow painter Jill Hoy, artist George Nick, poet and critic John Yau and curators Katherine French (Catamount Arts), John Stomberg (Mount Holyoke College Art Museum), and Deborah Wye (MOMA).
Showtimes:
Green Mountain Film Festival Screenings for Imber’s Left Hand:
Friday 8:00pm, Saturday 4:00pm and Sunday 6:00pm
Monday 5:30pm and 7:30pm, Tuesday through Thursday 7:30pm, Wednesday matinee 1:30pm
Tickets: $8 Adults, $7 Seniors, $6 Students/Members
Matinee tickets: $6 Adults, $5 Seniors, $4 Students/Members