Gallery Henoch is pleased to announce "Familiar Friends," a selection of recent works by John Evans presenting a range of paintings that capture the essence of his New England aesthetic. It will run from May 4 - 27, 2023.

The exhibition features seascapes, bodies of water, boats, and water lilies, all depicting sites the artist has visited repeatedly over many years, which have become like old acquaintances.

John Evans’ paintings have a level of sophistication and specificity. They are as much about New England and the New England aesthetic, as they are all his own. Varying his oft subjects of choice, he tethers between seascapes and bodies of water that house lily pads. Perhaps in this most recent body of work, the two contrasting worlds seem to meet in a way that feels closer than ever. In Fog, boats extend into an invisible horizon only evident by their shrinking scale. They appear to float and are stationary, evidenced by their steady shadows, uninterrupted by waves.

Similarly, in Meredith and Homeland, the subject changes to conceptualized versions of lily pads, floating discs, abstracted and removed from the blue water. The placements of the lily pads, fall into a highly unnatural pattern, not unlike that of the parked boats. While the boats are assigned spots, manned by human contact, the lily pads are strewn wildly in nature, outside of any form of mechanical placement. Evans has found, or made, an uncanny similarity.

When an artist deeply studies and obsesses over a subject, it starts to develop a life of its own and in this case a familiarity. We know Evans’ lily pads and seascapes, but with time they are being fine tuned and redacted. In that space, there is freedom that relies less on representation and more on gesture. He gives our eyes a space to land, rest even.

Contrarily, in Look! and Reasonable Tide, the artist pulls back and widens his lens allowing us to witness more of the landscape. Less stylized than the boats and lily pads, these landscape paintings seem to reckon with atmospheric conditions, and matters of the heart.

(Katy Diamond Hamer)

In these works the artist captures singular moments by stripping away excess elements, arranging shapes and spaces in a deliberate manner, leaving behind color and pattern. In several paintings the sun becomes a series of yellow squares, while floating boats transform into vibrant rectangles of orange and blue. Evans continues to push the boundaries of his style and palette, sometimes verging on abstraction.

John Evans received his MFA from Boston University. His first solo show with Gallery Henoch was in 1984. Works by Evans are held in the permanent collections of several distinguished institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, MA, and the Houston Museum of Fine Art.