Chris Page

Spirit of Place presents the work of Alex Buchanan, Sunny Chapman, R. A. Friedman, Kathleen Moroney, Chris Page, and Mindy Veissid, artists who gently evoke a personal sense of the emotional history contained within a landscape or natural phenomenon. Their respective art works tell us more about the psychic energy and mood of a place than provide a description of an iconic or recognizable locale. The selected artworks provide the viewer insights into how the depicted place or view of nature makes the artist feel just as much as it tells us what it looks like to them. These artistic artifacts reveal facets of the artist's interior life and also carry something of the collective unconscious.

Chris Page

Artist Bio
Chris Page

Chris Page has been exploring the intersection of nature and painterly abstraction throughout his artistic career. In 2013, Page expanded his artmaking approach to include a walking practice focused on being present in the landscape, taking photographs that are the basis of his work in the studio. This resulted in his Sky Series with shows throughout Western Massachusetts, and in 2016, he created an installation, Eyes Toward Heaven, at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. He has shown throughout New England, and nationally.

Page grew up in Boston, where he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1974, he and his wife built a home and studio in the woods near Amherst, MA. They recently moved to the Southcoast, where his walking practice is now centered on Gooseberry Island and Horseneck Beach.
Artist Statement
Artist Statement

I am captivated by the unceasing rhythms and intense visual diversity of the surf at Horseneck Beach. I experience waves as events in time. Through repetition of photographic images, spectrogram recordings of wave sounds, and expressive painting, I strive to capture something fundamental in the nature of the ocean.

The ocean is constantly changing the shoreline. This summer the process of seaweed accumulation at Gooseberry caught my attention. Eccentric forms emerged as wave action deposited seaweed and then washed sand away to reveal compacted, deeply interwoven masses that contrast starkly with the smooth sandy beach.

As I walk, I use my camera to document moments of witnessing, that hold something ineffable. The resulting photographs are combined and manipulated from a painter’s perspective. In this show, photographs of rocks scattered in the water and on land reveal striking spatial fields. My goal is to create works that emerge from the edge of my felt experience and convey an enigmatic presence so evident in the natural landscape.
10Wave-Combine_Chris-Page-Art-1

Chris Page
Wave Progression 8.31.2023, 2023
Inkjet prints
80" x 110"

ThreeRowWave-Lighter_Chris-Page-Art-2

Chris Page
Wave Time 08.31.2023, 2023
Acrylic & pencil on paper, inkjet
14" x 33"

Spectrogram-6

Chris Page
Horseneck Wave Sounding 7.27.2023, 2023
Inkjet print
17" x 58"

Three-Part-Spectrogram-Combined

Chris Page
Wave Sound Wave, 2023
Inkjet print
17" x 68"

Wave-Rough-Recovered2

Chris Page
Two Ways to See, 2023
Inkjet print
8.5" x 45"