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MOVING PICTURESHENRY ISAACS

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FRONT: Fishtail Mountain, over Pokhara, Nepal, oil on linen, 44 x 44 in.

HENRY ISAACS IN NEPALBY DANIEL KANY

In early 2019, a client who had found the paintings of Henry Isaacs through Gleason Fine Art approached the artist about traveling to Nepal to paint the Himalayas. Isaacs, who had studios at Little Cranberry Island, Portland, and Vermont at the time, was suffering from an MS-like disease that had forced him to rethink his working process. For a while, he insistently resisted the undertaking, finally relenting. In hindsight, the Nepal project became the ideal reboot for him. From the moment he touched a brush onto canvas in Nepal, his work exploded with new possibilities.

Isaacs doesn't work from photographs. Instead, everywhere he goes, he brings a backpack filled with oil paints, brushes, palette sheets, and small canvasses and panels. He then begins to paint what he calls "notes." Some look like finished paintings, while others are no more than a few gestures, boldly brush-flickered across the surface. For most of two years, Isaacs had focused on painting many of his “notes” into completion.

For a larger painting, Isaacs might make dozens of these "notes." For a major commission, he makes scores. Through his "notes," Isaacs finds structures, forms, compositions, and painterly phrases.

Isaacs and his wife Donna made the trip to Nepal and stayed for a month. Isaacs is a seasoned traveler and has used his paint-all-the-time approach to explore wherever he has visited. He planned to do the same in Nepal, not knowing precisely what he would find there. But what he found energized him and his painting beyond any expectation.

"Henry has always been able to handle a brush, but the Nepal works have a new balance of composition, color, and mark-making, To me," explains gallery-owner Dennis Gleason, "they feel like they have more energy than ever because they represent the culmination of what he's been trying to do for the past few years. It's all been pointing toward this moment, this body of work."

In "Eastern Himalayas II, Nepal," the mountains surge boldly into the sky, dwarfing the temple towers in the

foreground. One thinks of Marsden Hartley's seminal "Mount Katahdin, Autumn Number 1." We sense the awe of intimidation, the aura of the sublime. The pull of the mountain forms is like visual gravity.

In "Dance at the Picnic Grounds, Nepal," we follow a celebratory scene under brightly colored, hanging strings of prayer flags. We see only the cap of Everest peaking out at the very top of the canvas, but we feel a broader sense of scale knowing it's looming behind everything in the painting.

In "Eastern Himalayas I," we see a distant, vast and jagged mountain range. The mountains begin blue and solid on the left and then modulate into buttery creams on the right as the scene flows down and away. From our elevated perspective, we cannot enter this space. Isaacs has taken this approach in the past: "The perspective is a touch of Magical Realism. I put myself 20 feet up in the air. Raising the viewpoint is an idea I stole from Roerich." Isaacs is referring to the artist Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), the only international artist to have focused on painting the Himalayas on site.

Finding only one painter who had seriously taken on the subject only served to energize Isaacs: "In my 'notes,' I thought it absolutely necessary to go over the top in what I did. I needed to come home with a visual dictionary of these places and their aspects. At first I was going to do 50 or so 'notes,' then 100, and wound up with 175." The energy didn't stop there. Isaacs began to work furiously the day he returned to his Potland studio, immediately beginning a series of 4-foot paintings.

For his Nepal paintings, Isaacs has taken all of his fully developed tools and reinvented them on a dramatically new scale. He has also added new ideas and perspectives and more than a dash of his brand of Magical Realism. "The people were amazing," he recalls, "I was painting everywhere--at temples, cafes, everywhere--and they kept asking me about what I was doing. They had never seen it before. Some would join me. It was an extraordinary place."

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Dance at the Picnic Grounds, Namo Buddha, Nepal, oil on linen, 56 x 44 in.

HENRY ISAACSMOVING PICTURES

31 Townsend Avenue • Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538T 207.633.6849 E info@gleasonfineart.com W gleasonfineart.com

Hours: M to S: 10 am to 5 pm • Sunday: 11 am to 4 pm

E x c e p t i o n a l 1 9 t h t h r o u g h 2 1 s t C e n t u r y F i n e A r t o n t h e C o a s t o f M a i n e s i n c e 1 9 8 5 .

Including a selection of Henry's recent Nepal paintingsAugust 1 to September 2, 2019

GALA RECEPTIONFOR HENRY:

First Friday, August 2, 4 to 7 pm

Friends, Fellow Artists,and the Public

Cordially Invited

SPECIAL EVENT:TALK AND

BOOK-SIGNING

Travel Notes: Paintings by Henry Isaacs

with Author Dan Kany and Artist Henry Isaacs

Friday, August 2, 4 to 5:30 pm

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Chukhung Valley, Nepal, oil on linen, 40 x 50 in.

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Ganesh Mountain, Eastern Himalayas, Nuwakot, Nepal, oil on linen, 44 x 44 in.

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Eastern Himalayas II, Nepal, oil on linen, 44 x 44 in.

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Above the Eastern Prom, Portland, Maine, oil on linen, 48 x 78 in.

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Edge of Seal Harbor, oil on canvas, 16 x 36 in.

Capitol Island #5, Maine, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 in. Porter Preserve, Boothbay, Maine, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in.

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May, Galaxy Road, Pomfret, Vermont, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in.

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Stupa, oil on board, 13 x 9 in.

Study for “Dance at Picnic Grounds”, oil on board, 13 x 9 in.

Himalayas I, oil on board, 13 x 9 in. Himalayas II, oil on board, 13 x 9 in.

Himalayas III, oil on board, 13 x 9 in. Stupa, oil on board, 13 x 9 in.

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At the Appalachian Gap, Chittendon County, Vermont, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in.

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Eastern Himalayas I, Nepal, oil on linen, 44 x 44 in.

E x c e p t i o n a l 1 9 t h t h r o u g h 2 1 s t C e n t u r y F i n e A r t o n t h e C o a s t o f M a i n e s i n c e 1 9 8 5 .

Dennis Gleason is a Certified Member of

the Appraisers Association of America.

31 Townsend Ave., PO Box 540 Boothbay Harbor, ME 04538207. 633.6849info@gleasonfineart.comgleasonfineart.com