TRUNK SHOW II is British artist Graeme Black’s first US show. It follows the success of TRUNK SHOW I, hosted in 2021 by Messums Harrogate in Yorkshire, UK. TRUNK SHOW II will open on June 11, 2022 at Marders in Bridgehampton, where it will run until July 10. The exhibition is a celebration of nature; a meditation on the magnificence of trees.

A trained fine artist, Black spent thirty years in Creative Director positions with global luxury goods brands, including Giorgio Armani and Salvatore Ferragamo. His passion for painting was re-kindled by wanderings in the forests around his home in North Yorkshire. Early, experimental tree-scape studies have evolved into a full body of work which makes up this show. The medium is oil paint on raw canvas.

The layering possibilities of oils and the naturalistic texture of cotton provide the perfect materials which build through successive layers into a depiction of the surface texture of bark. Branches and trunks intersect creating intriguing negative space on the canvas. The artist manipulates scale creating mesmerising abstractions within figurative interpretations. The viewer cannot help but question what he or she is looking at, when a towering trunk is simply presented on the horizontal plane, foxing the eye.

The paintings are on long, even elongated, canvases which the artist uses to create individual portraits of his subjects. The viewer cannot escape connecting with their individual personalities. Hanging together as a forest or alone in splendid isolation, the artist captures the emotion of walking through a woodland and catching glimpses of color and light.