October 11-November 16, 2019> MAINSITE CONTEMPORARY ART Presents IRMGARD GEUL / SKIP HILL ‘Between Pastures & Skies’ Art From The Ranch, 2014-2019. The exhibition ‘Between Pastures & Skies’ is the culmination of a vision born from the unique creative relationship and special friendship of the artists IRMGARD GEUL and SKIP HILL. The two front galleries at Mainsite Contemporary will feature select original mixed-medium works, paintings, drawings, installations, photos and videos produced by the artists over the last five years in their studios on a picturesque 120 acre horse ranch in Oklahoma.
The ‘Between Pastures & Skies’ Blog is both the backstory and the preview of this exciting exhibition. Subscribe for updates below and follow the lead up to Opening Night. ‘ IRMGARD GEUL / SKIP HILL ‘Between Pastures & Skies’ Art From The Ranch, 2014-2019 opens at MAINSITE CONTEMPORARY ART October 11, 2019 as part of the festivities during 2nd Friday Norman Art Walk. Norman Art Walk, a monthly citywide celebration of ART, is a collaboration of artists, arts organizations and businesses in the Walker Arts District of Downtown Norman, brought to the public by the Norman Arts Council. All events are free and open to the public.
“Free of any didactic or moral intent, tortured conceptualism or social agenda beyond the politics of love, Skip Hill is a professional visual artist who creates rich, lyrical works of art that exude a graphic fragrance and a sensuous line.”
Using acrylic paints, markers, inks and cut paper from a collection of source materials, Skip Hill has produced a body of work that includes mixed-medium drawings, paintings on canvas and wood, collages on paper, and large scale interior and exterior murals.
Thematically poetic, and subtlety narrative in content, the Art of Skip Hill is a visual journey through verdant gardens featuring feminine figures, flocks of birds, exotic fauna, mesmerizing moods, rich textures and vivid colors of an imagined environment he invites his audience to explore.
Skip Hill’s art focuses on the beauty of composition, the exuberance of process, on positive and negative space, on contrasts of mood, colors and flowing line work. Some of the most captivating parts of his mixed-media drawings are in the peripheral details sourced from Art History, elements of folk art, Tattoo-like expressive patterning, looping graphic lines, kinetic scribbling, Asian calligraphy, Pop culture and African motifs.
Skip Hill dances deftly between the idealized ethereal world of his artistic vision and the very real process of fleshing it out in the Studio. There his process toggles between a love for the thematic and the conceptual question “What is the story here?” and an appetite for the stimulating physicality of answering the question “Can you show me something Beautiful?”
In the highly productive years since returning to the U.S. from The Netherlands, Skip Hill has created and sold hundreds of works, participated in museum group exhibitions, selected art fairs, and shown in commercial galleries. He has illustrated several award-winning children’s books including ‘A Gift From Greensboro’ and ‘On Tying A Shoe’ from Penny Candy Press.
His original paintings, drawings and murals are found in public spaces and private collections throughout the United States, France, The Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
For the last four years the artist has lived, worked and traveled internationally from a studio on a 120 acre horse ranch in Oklahoma.
October 11-November 16, 2019> MAINSITE CONTEMPORARY ART Presents IRMGARD GEUL / SKIP HILL ‘Between Pastures & Skies’ Art From The Ranch, 2014-2019.
The mixed-media works of international artist Irmgard Geul are best viewed as colorful aerial maps capturing, on paper and canvas, a bird’s eye view of her internal creative explorations scanning the tracts of landscape below and the unfathomable ocean of sky above.
Her paintings serve as visual diaries that document her external observations of the rolling landscape, the daily rhythm of life and the changing seasons on the 120-acre horse ranch in Oklahoma that has been her home and a source of inspiration since arriving in 1998 from her native country, The Netherlands.
Having built and established an internationally renowned equine import and export facility in the heartland of America. Irmgard Geul always felt a yearning to reconnect with the creative urges from her early love for Art, her Fine Arts education in the Netherlands; her unforgettable recollections of India and her life as a graphic designer for corporate brands around the world.
Today in her light-filled studio overlooking open pastures and a wide horizon, Irmgard devotes herself full-time to fulfilling those creative urges in acrylics, ink, oil crayon, collage and photography for an audience of devoted collectors throughout the United States, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Colombia and Israel.
Irmgard has gallery representation in Oklahoma and had several solo and group shows around the country.
Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It’s geometrically perfect. It’s tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard – or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.
Studio View: Bob and Whiz having breakfast in the north pasture
“Hoe gaat het?” “How’s it going?”, She’d ask with a wave most mornings as she unloaded her things out of the black Ford Super Duty pickup truck and headed towards the main house, which serves as her art studio and office at the ranch.
Most mornings “Goed!’ was my reply from the porch of the bunkhouse apartment twenty steps away. Most mornings I had already fed and watered the horses by now, had refreshed my social media feeds several times over while thinking I should be doing sun salutes, and I had reviewed whatever art was in process in the barn studios or laid out on the floor of the apartment.
Most mornings, in from the cold in Winter, and in from the humidity of Summer, there was half a pot brewing in the shiny Braun coffeemaker my girlfriend had given me, so that by the time Irmgard had pulled up the drive from the front gate, I was sitting on the porch with a cigarette and a cup of whatever coffee I found in the cupboard, in my hands.
But on the best mornings, those cool, crisp, sunny, hopeful mornings when I opened the blinds to the apartment after three days to discover I was out of sugar and had just enough milk for the first cup, I would receive a one word text from her 30 minutes, or so, after she had arrived. “Koffie?”
Sharing the morning and “koffie” with Kat
An invitation for “koffie tijd” (coffee time) evokes in me memories of my life in the Netherlands, watching the father of my host family slowly whisk milk into a warm froth over a stove. The mother would then carefully pour the velvety foam mixture into floral porcelain cups, sitting on a serving tray, filled halfway with the roasted sweet bitterness of Van Nelle or Douwe Egberts brand coffee. Each guest was on time. The table was attentively set and the proper details regarded, with tiny spoons and china saucers for each cup, fresh tulips, lace doilies, napkins and tins of assorted imported Danish butter cookies, Voortman windmill cookies, stropwafels or fresh baked goods from the local “bakkerij.” The ritual was repeated in some variation each day between 10am-11am, at 4pm and after dinner between 7-8pm.
“Koffie tijd” was my first introduction to the Dutch social concept of “Gezelligheid”. The term encompasses the heart of Dutch culture, as the Dutch tend to love all things gezellig, pronounced “heh-SELL-ick.”
Locals and foreigners alike will tell you that the word cannot be translated. Its meaning includes everything from cozy to friendly, from comfortable to relaxing, and from enjoyable to gregarious.
According to Wikipedia, “A perfect example of untranslatability is seen in the Dutch language through the word gezellig, which does not have an English equivalent.
Literally, it means cozy, quaint, or nice, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness.”
It is with the spirit of gezelligheid and a warm cup of Dutch coffee with cookies or stropwafels that Irmgard and I would meet most mornings, to discuss the status of the horses, to share some gossip, talk about the news, the weather, the latest issue of NRC Handelsblad newspaper in the mail from Holland, as well as our ongoing creative processes and art projects. It was a small way for both of us to stay in touch with a custom that evokes a sense of “general togetherness'” and the comfort of “home”, whether living in the Netherlands, or on a 120 acre horse ranch in south central Oklahoma, USA.
IRMGARD GEUL / SKIP HILL Between Pastures and Skies / Art From The Ranch (2015-2019) 