Patrick Alston: Apertures

Heather Gaudio Fine Art is pleased to present Patrick Alston: Apertures, his first solo exhibition at the gallery.  The new paintings featured in the show continue the artist’s signature vocabulary that focuses on a visual exploration of color and gesture.  The show will open with a public reception on May 2nd, 4 -6pm, and runs through June 13th.

“Patrick Alston’s paintings ask something genuine of the viewer — they require engagement, attention, stillness and a willingness to sit with uncertainty. That kind of work is rare, and we are honored to be able provide that viewing experience to audiences here in the gallery,” states Heather Gaudio.

Apertures builds from an understanding of perception as something both deeply personal and collectively shared, shaped through gesture, color, and accumulated layers that hold traces of time, decision, and revision. These are echoed by the philosopher Alan Watts’ statement: “you are an aperture through which the universe looks out.”

Alston’s process begins in a state that is largely uncontrolled, with initial washes that move across the surface without a fixed image in mind.  The artist establishes a palette and a loose sense of composition through instinct rather than intention. These early moments carry a degree of chance, where the painting is not yet defined but full of potential. From there, the work is gradually refined. Marks are added, obscured, reworked, and adjusted over time, as the painting moves between uncertainty and clarity. This process mirrors something fundamental about lived experience. “We enter the world without authorship over our initial conditions, shaped by circumstance, environment, and forces outside of our control. Over time, through action, reflection, and resistance, those conditions are negotiated and reformed,” states Alston. The paintings hold that tension between what is given and what is made, where randomness and intention remain in constant dialogue.

For Alston, color functions as a vehicle for experience rather than description. Relationships between hues create moments of tension, resistance, and harmony that feel familiar but stay open. In this way, color relationships begin to mirror the interactions we encounter in life, where there is a constant push and pull, a resistance and a harmony, an ebb and a flow that reflects the complexities of what it means to be human. Gesture records a presence, but never settles into a fixed meaning, allowing space for the viewer to enter and locate themselves within the work. Layers act as shifting lenses, where what is revealed and concealed continues to change depending on perspective and how long one looks.

Each canvas holds a finite experience. There are limits in its dimensions, in the number of gestures it can contain, in the layers it can sustain before reaching a point of resolution. The painting arrives at a kind of conclusion, a boundary that cannot be exceeded. In this way, each work echoes the conditions of an individual life, shaped within constraints, unfolding over time, and ultimately held within a fixed span.

To enhance the viewing experience in the exhibition, the artist created a set of colorful stools intended for viewers to comfortably sit and spend time contemplating the paintings. Mounted on wheels for easy navigation around the gallery space, the seats can be moved and situated in front of each work, giving the audience the opportunity to spend as much time in front of a painting as they wish.  Viewers are invited to recognize both the specificity of their own perspective and the possibility of shared experience that exists beyond it. “What we see, feel, and understand is never static, but shaped by time, memory, and context. There is a quiet sense of onism that emerges, the awareness that we are each confined to our own singular point of view.”   With this slow approach to viewing the artist hopes that each work becomes a separate aperture, a distinct experience, a different set of conditions and emotional registers. Moving between them allows for a shifting perspective, an opportunity to step outside of oneself, if only momentarily.  In this way, the paintings operate as both individual expressions and as part of a larger field, where meaning is not prescribed but emerges through attention, reflection and the act of looking.  

Alston has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in the United States and abroad and his works are in many notable public, private and corporate collections. 

Heather Gaudio Fine Art specializes in emerging and established artists, offering painting, works on paper, photography, and sculpture. The gallery provides a full range of art advisory services, from forming and maintaining a collection, to securing secondary market material, to assisting with framing and installation. The focus is on each individual client, selecting art that best serves his or her vision, space, and resources. The six exhibitions offered every year are designed to present important talent and provide artwork appealing to a broad range of interests. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday; 10:30am to 5:30pm; and by appointment.