Third Street Gallery archive: 2016 Exhibitions: Verano Paintings by Leslie Kenneth Price

Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery presents, Verano, a solo exhibition of paintings by Leslie Kenneth Price. The exhibitionruns from October 1 through November 6. This exhibition marks the launch of Humboldt State’s new fine arts gallery in Eureka, California.

Price, a native of New York City, has made his home with his family on California’s North Coast for several decades where he taught at Humboldt State University as a painting professor and continues to maintain his studio practice.
  
Leslie Kenneth Price uses acrylic paint on canvas and wood panels to create visually striking abstract paintings filled with layers of color and biomorphic forms. Price’s compositions employ complex combinations of light, line, space and color interacting with one another to create abstractions are simultaneously meditative and dynamic, engaging the eye and the mind.

He draws his inspiration from the observable natural world, especially his own garden, which provides the visual information from which he improvises.  In repeated feats of imagination, improvisation and a bit of faith, Price paints from memory referencing raw imagery as seen in gardens. He draws influence from organic motifs such as flowers, earth, bark, plants and weeds. The result is, a body of paintings that impart an uncanny sense of place that feels specific, yet has never been seen by anyone until revealed by the artist.

Price recalls that, “When I was a child I remember watching my Mom in our apartment tending to her houseplants, or noticing a weed pushing up through the crack of the cement sidewalk. Because of these and other experiences, I have chosen to use nature to as a metaphor for life. Flowers, for example, are pregnant with historical, religious, and social meanings, while addressing the impermanence and transitory nature of life and consciousness.”

 Verano: Paintings by Leslie Kenneth Price, is produced by Humboldt State students. Students enrolled in the Art Museum and Gallery Practices Program participate in the daily management and planning of shows at the gallery.  The gallery provides real-life opportunities for the students to develop their gallery and museum skills, which in turn provides them with experience that will help them to enter the job market. Many students who have participated in the program have gone on to careers in museums and galleries throughout the nation.

Exhibition Schedule and Location 
The exhibition will run from October 1 through November 6. The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and is closed on Mondays   A reception for the artist will be held at HSU First Street Gallery Saturday, October 1, 2016, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during Eureka's monthly Arts Alive event. Humboldt State University Third Street Gallery is located at 416 Third Street Eureka, California.  The gallery was recently relocated and renamed after 19 years in its former location on First Street in Eureka.  For more information, call (707) 443-6363.