Kathleen Kolb Paintings On Exhibit At The Jackson Gallery At Town Hall Theater, Opens 9/18

The paintings of Bristol resident Kathleen Kolb are featured in a new exhibit that opens September 18 at the Jackson Gallery at Town Hall Theater.

Ms. Kolb moved to Vermont in the 1970s and has focused on capturing the essence of her natural surroundings ever since.  “My work is driven by two forces - a deep attachment to place and a passion for the visual effect of light on our everyday surroundings.”

In the past decade, Kathleen Kolb has become interested in logging work in Vermont which is an integral part of the human endeavor in this state.  She considers it a privilege to live amidst a huge forest, observing and making pictures of loggers and their work.  With great fascination, Ms. Kolb has captured the equipment and machinery involved in logging, the figures of men working in Vermont forests, and the amazing forms of trees in the larger landscape that surrounds them.  Three of her logging paintings, part of the Art of Action program of the Vermont Arts Council, are included in this exhibition.

Kathleen Kolb’s aesthetic development has also focused on another natural phenomenon – icebergs. When she encountered a very lively nineteenth century painting of an iceberg close to a harbor on the coast of Labrador she became possessed with the desire to see the beauty of these ice creations for herself.   She set a personal goal to paint icebergs before global warming consigns them to memory. To create these paintings Kolb was supported by the Vermont Community Foundation.   Traveling to the northeast coast of Newfoundland in the spring of 2008 she was able to experience through photography, drawing, and painting, the floating ice first hand. Seven of her iceberg paintings will be premiered in the upcoming exhibit.

The exhibit will also include paintings of rural architecture, mountains, and lake panoramas that are more familiar to Kolb’s followers in the Middlebury area. 

The Jackson Gallery exhibition “Ice, Water, Mountains: A Changing Landscape, Oils and Watercolors by Kathleen Kolb” at the Town Hall Theater promises to offer a rich and eclectic representation of Ms. Kolb’s watercolors and oil paintings.  The exhibit opening will be on Friday, September 18th from 5:00-7:00pm.  It is free to the public with a cash bar.  For more information call 802-382-9222.