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THE COLOR OF GROWTH
January 9 – February 28, 2025

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 6:00 - 8:00 PM
ARTIST TALK: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2:00 PM

Artists: Irja Bodén, JoAnne Lobotsky, Patrick Neal, Colin O’Con

The Color of Growth brings together four artists whose work reimagines nature and landscape as dynamic sites of transformation. Set against the monochromatic backdrop of winter in the Northeast, the exhibition invites viewers to look beyond seasonal dormancy and consider growth as an ongoing, layered process—one that persists beneath the surface, even when unseen.

“The artists in this exhibition approach plant life not as passive scenery but as an active carrier of meaning and experience” says curator Sharon Bates, “color functions as both subject and strategy—expressive, intuitive, and often deliberately unnatural.”

Irja Bodén presents sculptural work inspired by the untended hedgerow bordering her studio. These ceramic vessels draw from the tangled coexistence of old and new growth, focusing on invasive vines that can overwhelm surrounding vegetation. For Bodén, these forms become metaphors for the ongoing erosion of women’s rights. The open, bottomless blue interiors of her vessels evoke life, freedom, and resistance, underscoring growth as a contested and fragile condition.

JoAnne Lobotsky’s expressionistic landscapes are driven by color and texture as emotional force. Working intuitively and without preplanning, Lobotsky embraces awkwardness and deliberate clumsiness as a rejection of polished contemporary aesthetics. Her frequently unnatural color palettes reflect environmental fragility and damage.

Patrick Neal approaches landscape and still life through a contemporary lens, using watercolor and oil to build composite scenes informed by memory, observation, and drawing. A recurring roving grid structure organizes and abstracts his imagery, emphasizing both cinematic shifts in perspective and the physical act of mark-making. Neal’s landscapes move fluidly between urban and rural environments—from public parks and construction sites to wooded regions of upstate New York

Colin O’Con’s paintings hover between representation and abstraction, drawing on the language of traditional landscape while pushing toward the subliminal and unknown. Influenced by photography, observation, and memory—but painted from neither—his work emerges through layered washes that gradually reveal imagined terrains.

Together, the works in The Color of Growth challenge romantic notions of nature and renewal. They remind us that growth is rarely linear or benign—it is tangled, contested, and deeply colored by the conditions of the worlds we inhabit.

The exhibit opens Friday, January 9 and runs through Saturday, February 28, 2026. The public is invited to an Opening Reception on Friday, January 9 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. An Artist Talk with Irja Bodén and JoAnne Lobotsky is scheduled for Saturday, February 21 at 2:00 PM.

All programs are located at the Millbrook Library, 3 Friendly Lane, Millbrook, NY.