Robert Allan and John & Elli Milan

March 5th – March 29th, 2009

Opening Reception:  Thursday, March 5th, 6-8pm

We are proud to present a show featuring works from two artists new to Gallery IMA!

                     
Robert Allan, A Distant Shore, Acrylic on Panel, 40 x 30 inches            

Dimensions in Time
Seattle-based artist Robert Allan was born and raised in the Midwest, an influence visible in his fearless fusion of industrial materials and in the strong earthen tones of his color palette. To date, his resume reads: merchant seaman, longshoreman, truck driver, photographer for the U.S. Army, art director, filmmaker, pastor, and school teacher. Due to a recent, since-resolved battle with blindness, Robert has a renewed appreciation for his natural talent in the visual arts.  His weakened eyesight, rather than burdening the artist, has contributed to the unique, abstracted way in which he views and depicts the world.

Robert boasts the physicality of his art, alternately excavating and constructing forms to create a complex topography across the surfaces of his works and effectively recruiting light and shadow.  His confident and often surprising combinations of various materials, textures, patterns, shapes, and colors are reflective of his own fascinating, multi-layered biography.  According to Robert, creativity is like a puzzle, the solution to which falls secondary to the means to get there.  In his own words, “the act of creativity is much more important than the finished work.”  This drives him to believe that many of his paintings are never finished but rather simply await another design intervention.

John & Elli Milan, Portal Symmetry, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36 inches

Portal Authority
John and Elli Milan have forged a unique artistic identity that provides insight into their ability to edit with two sets of eyes as well as into the life experiences that they have, together, garnered.  Though both individually skilled and successful artists in their own rights, the couple agrees that this collaboration brings out a side of their work that neither could reach by themselves.  At once playful and deeply spiritual, their paintings are warm, colorful, whimsical narratives of their constant dialogue with one another.

John and Elli met in Honolulu, Hawaii in high school. They studied painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and then moved to Athens Georgia where they received their BFA from the University of Georgia.  They are internationally accomplished, having shown their work in Canada, Europe, the United State, the Philippines, and Dubai.  This is their first show with Gallery IMA.