JUNE BUG: ERIC AHO

12 Jun - 20 Jul 2025

  • ERIC AHO

    JUNE BUG
  • Fireflies, rising mists and bogs, meadows, tulips; June Bug presents a large and varied body of work by painter Eric...
    Fallen Oak, 2024
    Oil on linen
    48 x 52 inches
    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...
    June Bug, 2025
    Oil on linen
    60 x 52 inches
    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.
     
  • Tidal Forest I, 2024 Oil on linen 52 1/2 x 48 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Maa (for Kaija Saariaho, 1952 - 2023), 2024 Oil on linen 48 x 52 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Small Dutch Meadow, 2024 Oil on linen 30 x 36 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    The Meadow, Autumn, 2024 Oil on linen 28 x 40 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Second Dutch Meadow (Black Tulips), 2024 Oil on linen 52 x 60 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Tidal Forest I, 2024
    Oil on linen
    52 1/2 x 48 inches
  • 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.