Exhibition | Red Sky at Night
July 18 - August 9, 2024
5-7pm THURSDAY, JULY 18
Opening Reception and Camden Art Walk
1pm SUNDAY, AUGUST 4
Brenton Hamilton Artist Talk
$1,800
Brenton Hamilton
Sailor Dreaming
cyanotype collage, 23x15"
Page Gallery is pleased to present Red Sky at Night, an exhibition of cyanotypes from Brenton Hamilton. A public opening reception will be held Thursday, July 18, 5-7pm. Brenton Hamilton will present an artist talk Sunday, August 4 at 1pm.
Brenton Hamilton: A Storyteller
Brenton Hamilton spent many early years between the mainland and an island where his family worked in Casco Bay. The shapes of boats, mariners, the water of the ocean and its behavior, ropes, sunlight, and taciturn figures are characters in his early boyhood.
For over three decades, Brenton Hamilton has shaped visual narratives influenced by the classic, early 20th c. surrealistic motifs. Hamilton forges new connections for his viewers to revel in the space between imagination and autobiography. Fragments take on new meanings and become symbols and archetypes; unusual correspondences - a floating arm, a puff of cloud placed in unexpected ways - suggest new possibilities.
In the exhibition Red Sky at Night, viewers experience a tall tale of floating clouds in a night sky and mischievous sailors. Tangles of jute rope serve as a metaphor for human experiences. Poignant clouds sit under the cover of a special blue darkness. Glinting gold leaf, at once elegant and eternal, lays a complex pattern of imagined constellations and unknown stars shimmering to light the way. Hamilton’s nighttime folly, embedded within the deepest blue you can imagine, tells of a sailor and his exploits. Hamilton reflects on his own adventures: a boyhood idyll and a space to dream.
Brenton Hamilton has shaped these unusual narratives with the 19th c photo process cyanotype, using the sun to create the imagery. A combination of iron salts exposed to the sun creates a new compound - and a vibrant inscrutable blue. Hamilton washes fine European papers with the cyanotype chemistry using a handmade Japanese brush with intuitive timing between layers to create his deep signature blue. Hamilton's blue reaches a depth to near totality.