A Little Nightmare Before Christmas

Vale Fine Art presents an exhibition of pop-surrealist work by acclaimed artists Edward Walton Wilcox and Lee Harvey Roswell.

Exhibition Dates:  December 13, 2011 – January 13, 2012

Opening Reception for the artists: Tuesday, December 13 from 6-9pm.

November 17, 2011, Paso Robles, CA.  Vale Fine Art is proud to present “Nightmare Before Christmas,” a two-man show featuring the extraordinary work of Neo Gothic pop-surrealists, Edward Walton Wilcox and Lee Harvey Roswell. The exhibition will be on view from December 13 through January 13, 2012. An opening reception for the artists will be at the gallery on Tuesday, December 13 from 6pm-9pm.

The work of Edward Walton Wilcox exposes his darkest dreaming; hand-carved Gothic altarpieces soar twelve feet high while young maidens in nightgowns and child-size skeletons are captured in landscapes of blazing windmills.  Hauntingly beautiful, the work is overt in its reference to Gothic convention, in both content and physical facture. Wilcox's use of primitive materials, such as wood, glass, rabbit skin glues, Italian pitch and gesso lend an old world authenticity to the crockets, tracery and other conventions of gothic carpentry that caricaturize the multi-disciplined art of Edward Walton Wilcox. Wilcox's work has been described by the LA Times as "Southern California Noir," while Art and Living states, (more)

"Edward Walton Wilcox's work exhibits an eerie quality that is hard to keep your eyes off of… the suggestions he makes are often unsettling. His images are dark, yes, but it's a darkness that Wilcox suggests should be more closely examined."

Wilcox explains, "I am fascinated with the fine line between beauty and repulsion as I continue to navigate the 'dangerous reaches of the unconscious' whereby a 'romance troubled by nightmares' may be further explored." 

Lee Harvey Roswell is a self-taught artist from Freefall, New York, whose work is noted for its blend of angst and humor. Themes of death and entropy, tribulation and futility run amok in his distinctly surreal, often-slapstick/often-nightmarish world. The result is at once mocking and melancholic. Says Lee of his work, “I'm interested in exactly this: creating narratives involving the fantastic images there to be culled forth from those fertile depths of the creative, neurotic-like mind. Concrete objects in mad motion, reflecting all the seductive, terrifying elements of existence. The inarguable forerunner of the senses is the eye. We are primarily an optically reliant species. So, as pictorial illusionists transforming nothing into artifacts of spiritual sustenance, I'm holding the potential painter up, not just as an admirable tradesman, but much, much more. He resides as a high-priest over that all-devouring human reality, a conducting channel through which nothing triumphantly becomes something.”

Lee now lives and works in San Francisco and Edward Walton Wilcox in Los Angeles and Paso Robles, CA.  Both artists’ work have been shown, collected and published internationally.

Exhibition Dates: December 13, 2011 – January 13, 2012
Opening Reception for the artists: Tuesday, December 13 from 6-9pm.

VALE FINE ART
619 12^th Street
Paso Robles, CA 93446
310-795-4680 / valefineart@gmail.com

About Vale Fine Art.  Owner Madeline Vale began her career in the art world as a private dealer and gallery liaison over twenty years ago in Palm Beach, FL and has worked on an international level in Los Angeles since 2004.  Having recently opened in the summer of 2011, the gallery is located in the heart of downtown Paso Robles, CA and is dedicated to representing exciting work, in a variety of media, by both established and emerging contemporary artists from around the world.

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