JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING – MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY is pleased to present June Bug, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Eric Aho. These works will remain on view at Maya Frodeman Gallery West, the gallery's Wilson location, from June 12th through July 20th, 2025. An artist reception and artist talk will be held Thursday, June 12th from 5 to 7 pm. Aho will be in attendance and is scheduled to begin speaking at 6 pm. All are welcome.
Fireflies, rising mists and bogs, meadows, tulips; June Bug presents a large and varied body of work by painter Eric Aho. Standing amidst the paintings, one feels the overt presence of the artist, as though immersed in an autobiographical journey. Quite literally, in Finnish, “aho” translates to “forest glade” or “wild meadow.” Indeed, the unmistakable hand of the artist beckons the viewer to join him on a walk through the coming months. Spring, defined here in angular reflective waterways, bogs and mists, gives way to summer’s feast of fireflies, billowing thunderclouds and sparkling blooms of Queen Anne’s Lace. Finally, autumn emerges in the meadow in crackling wheat tones and a landscape painter’s memento mori of a mighty tree in Fallen Oak (2024).
Alternately, and here for the first time, Aho’s exquisite nocturnes herald Dutch still life paintings, caught in the act of living. Aho’s tulips grow wild, uncut and untended in a fertile field of ferns. For Aho, who works from a hybrid of observation and memory, landscape painting is a way of possessing something we cannot possess, hovering between perception and what’s considered “real,” something there and not there, eluding our grasp. The human element is inherent; we feel our humanness rooted before Aho’s paintings. We are his guest by invitation, the dappled light of the natural world a testament to our relative smallness. Time stands still, yet journeys on.
Aho is best known for his captivating impressionistic scenes of the natural world. In gestural but measured strokes he conjures encompassing scenes ripe with shadow and space, color and shape, and stillness and motion, ever exhibiting his mastery of oil paint in all of its textures and viscosities. Within each work, Aho brilliantly captures the dichotomy of being in the wilderness, feeling connected to the environment and at the same moment disrupting the natural setting. Each of Aho's paintings exemplify this separation and union between oneself and nature.
Born in Melrose, Massachusetts in 1966, Eric Aho studied at the Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, England and then received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, MA. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include Eric Aho: An Unfinished Point in a Vast Surrounding at the New Britain Museum of American Art, CT (2016); and Eric Aho: Ice Cuts at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH (2016). His works are held in the permanent collections of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; Denver Art Museum, CO; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Neuberger Museum of Art, SUNY, NY; New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; and the Oulu Museum of Art, Finland, among others. Eric Aho lives and works in Saxtons River, Vermont.
