Art Show This Weekend
By Lee Wicks, Montague Reporter, October 2, 2014
Mishael Coggeshall-Burr will be having his third annual exhibit from 5PM to 8PM on October 4 in his barn at 70 Main Street in Montague Center. If you go, you will see between twelve and fifteen paintings (he was still working at the time of this interview) that represent layers of education, life experience, observation and commitment. With a full time job in the physics department at Amherst College, a family (he is married to Nadya Tkachenko who was featured in this paper a few weeks ago), and a big old house, he squeezes painting into his week because that is what he, as an artist, must do. The oil paintings that will be on exhibit are the end result of a complicated word problem; if this is Tuesday, when does Misha paint? This is not a simple question. Misha has learned by necessity to claim small chunks of time. He works in his home, snatching moments when a baby naps or before his family wakes in the morning. Fortunately his chosen medium, oil painting, can accommodate stops and starts. He says, “For now, my painting fits where it can, and that is fine with me. I can keep a painting in process for weeks that way, have time to reflect on it, and it actually helps me to have down time between sessions for other reasons, such as some effects need a dry underpainting, and some oil colors can take a while to dry enough.”
Misha’s patience, training and vision have created images that use photography as their source and grow from there to evoke strong feelings of people and place. He’s been inspired by the works of Cezanne (the Mt. St. Victoire series), very early Kandinski— and Vermeer. Like Vermeer, Misha says he is fascinated by the play of light from the lens into our eye. “Like him,” he says, “I use a lens as a starting point for my work. He adds that using a camera is practical because he can’t spend a day working in a field, though he would like to. Photography allows him to capture a memory in a format that he can translate into a painting. He says, ” A memory is not crystal clear, it is a sort of amalgamation of images and smells, feelings and thoughts… And this is ultimately what I’m after--and, I think, what a lot of art is about--this sense that one has somehow recorded an experience, and translated into a form that will endure.”
The upcoming exhibit is titled, Home, and in it he seeks to evoke, “the elusive moments, the memories of places lived and traveled that one can reflect back on.” In the exhibit’s description he writes, “ We leave our childhood home, yet forever maintain vivid pictures of the places that made us feel so carefree. We travel – keeping alive bright and exiting memories of foreign cities that became our Home for a short while. And finally, we settle and root in a place that will create new memories of Home for the next generation.”
His paintings, many with dark backgrounds filled with pinpricks of light, have a dream-like quality. They are dramatic and melancholy, as if Misha is grasping for a memory that is just out of reach. In this upcoming exhibit, he is including images of his childhood summer home on Cape Cod, his first adult Home in New York City, and as a traveler in Paris, as well as his current Home in Montague, MA, where his children inspire him to create and capture new memories.
His journey to this “Home,” in Montague has taken him all over the world, but he began his studies at Middlebury College in Vermont where he majored in art and physics, a combination that doesn’t seem strange to him at all. He says, “It was a good balance. I enjoyed both, and physics is about light, energy and understanding reality. Physicists must imagine in three dimensions.” Put that way the distance between art and science does not seem so vast.
After Middlebury he also studied painting in Glasgow, Scotland at the Glasgow School of Art. He says, “This is where I really learned about color and drawing, and it started me on the path I am on now.” While living and working in NYC he studied at the Art Student’s League in the evenings. Along the way he worked in galleries, including the Tate Gallery in London. The chronicle of his list of travels with Nadya and on his own is too lengthy to list here, but you can find all his biographical information and a gallery of past work at his website, www.coggeshallburr.com.
Many people in this area travel, but for those who don’t the vision of a world traveler grounded in an enduring sense of “Home,” will be available on Friday night, in a barn in the tiny New England village of Montague Center.
Misha’s patience, training and vision have created images that use photography as their source and grow from there to evoke strong feelings of people and place. He’s been inspired by the works of Cezanne (the Mt. St. Victoire series), very early Kandinski— and Vermeer. Like Vermeer, Misha says he is fascinated by the play of light from the lens into our eye. “Like him,” he says, “I use a lens as a starting point for my work. He adds that using a camera is practical because he can’t spend a day working in a field, though he would like to. Photography allows him to capture a memory in a format that he can translate into a painting. He says, ” A memory is not crystal clear, it is a sort of amalgamation of images and smells, feelings and thoughts… And this is ultimately what I’m after--and, I think, what a lot of art is about--this sense that one has somehow recorded an experience, and translated into a form that will endure.”
The upcoming exhibit is titled, Home, and in it he seeks to evoke, “the elusive moments, the memories of places lived and traveled that one can reflect back on.” In the exhibit’s description he writes, “ We leave our childhood home, yet forever maintain vivid pictures of the places that made us feel so carefree. We travel – keeping alive bright and exiting memories of foreign cities that became our Home for a short while. And finally, we settle and root in a place that will create new memories of Home for the next generation.”
His paintings, many with dark backgrounds filled with pinpricks of light, have a dream-like quality. They are dramatic and melancholy, as if Misha is grasping for a memory that is just out of reach. In this upcoming exhibit, he is including images of his childhood summer home on Cape Cod, his first adult Home in New York City, and as a traveler in Paris, as well as his current Home in Montague, MA, where his children inspire him to create and capture new memories.
His journey to this “Home,” in Montague has taken him all over the world, but he began his studies at Middlebury College in Vermont where he majored in art and physics, a combination that doesn’t seem strange to him at all. He says, “It was a good balance. I enjoyed both, and physics is about light, energy and understanding reality. Physicists must imagine in three dimensions.” Put that way the distance between art and science does not seem so vast.
After Middlebury he also studied painting in Glasgow, Scotland at the Glasgow School of Art. He says, “This is where I really learned about color and drawing, and it started me on the path I am on now.” While living and working in NYC he studied at the Art Student’s League in the evenings. Along the way he worked in galleries, including the Tate Gallery in London. The chronicle of his list of travels with Nadya and on his own is too lengthy to list here, but you can find all his biographical information and a gallery of past work at his website, www.coggeshallburr.com.
Many people in this area travel, but for those who don’t the vision of a world traveler grounded in an enduring sense of “Home,” will be available on Friday night, in a barn in the tiny New England village of Montague Center.