Paul Gruhler

Recent Work: 2005-2009

Untitled,2008 #21 acrylic on linen, 40" x 40"

January 8 - February 6, 2010
Opening Reception January 8, 5-7pm

An exhibition of acrylic paintings by Paul Gruhler will be on view in AVA Gallery and Art Center's E. N. Wennberg Gallery from January 8-February 6, 2010. A reception, free and open to the public, will take place on Friday, January 8, from 5 to 7pm.

Paul Gruhler, of Craftsbury Common, VT, is a self-taught artist with a long and impressive career that began with his first exhibition at the DeMena Gallery in New York in 1965. He has subsequently shown his work in galleries and museums in Mexico City, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and throughout the United States. In 2006 he curated the exhibition "Vermont Collections," for the Helen Day Art Center's 20th anniversary. He is currently curating a series of exhibitions to travel throughout the state of Vermont called "The Art of Vermont: The State Collection," funded by the Vermont Arts Council.

For his exhibition at AVA, Recent Work 2005-2009, Gruhler will be showing abstract paintings from the last five years of his over fifty-year-long art career. Working exclusively in acrylic paint, his work explores vertical and horizontal relationships in space and the harmony and tension within color, line and form. He works on both large and small scale square surfaces of linen or paper using highly-saturated color. Gruhler craves "passionate consciousness" in both his art and life and sees his work as "part of that universal process in nature, poetry and art, of change and refinement." Mickey Myers, executive Director of the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, VT writes: "Gruhler has developed his own visual language, which has grown stately and majestic over years of exploration... his most recent work (is) a culmination, a celebration, an acknowledgement of his roots and his rootedness in the world of abstraction."