On View: Tom Edwards & Sean Patrick Gallagher

**Kehler Liddell Gallery ** is pleased to present ** ** Tom Edwards - Observations & Obsessions and Sean Patrick Gallagher - _The Falling and The Rising_ Consisting of only ink on paper, Tom Edwards’ work in _Observations & Obsessions_, spans from 1975 to 2024. Several of the recently completed drawings in the exhibit were begun in 1985, many stored and forgotten, and then found and reworked to their present state in 2023. The development of the ‘time-extended’ drawings required that the initial “observed image” be reconstructed and completed through visual memories that stretch the concepts of time and space within the resulting drawing.  Edwards often works with multiple sketches of a specific place referenced to produce a drawing with variable overlapping points of view that distort time and space relationships. “I rarely consider my drawings “finished” but rather “works in progress”. My insistence on an open-ended approach to my work allows me to expand and contract elements and spaces within the drawing. Initial observations drift into the realm of an obsessive necessity moving from descriptive logic to compulsive infilling of any available open space. Dark matter invading the open spaces reflects the organic energy of the universe”, states Edwards. In_ _his show_ The Falling and The Rising,_ ** ** Sean Gallagher works with two concepts.  First, in his series, _These Wine-Dark, Warming Currents, Rising,_ Gallagher’s work displays no horizon or land beyond the vast, red waters. The “wine-dark” description is a reference to the often-used poetic epithet describing the sea in the Odyssey and Iliad. In his work, Gallagher uses the phrase as an ominous metaphor for contemporary climate change and political currents. In his second series, Near the End, They Really Did Shine, Gallagher conveys autumnal foliage as a metaphor for what one can create at the end of a duration. The chosen trees were depicted from Stanley Quarter Park, in New Britain, next to Central Connecticut State University, where I have taught for decades. That park contains memories of loved ones and students, drawing, conversing, and laughing, including several whom I have never seen again, shortly after leaving there.