Eric Dever: To Look at Things in Bloom will feature 19 recent paintings created in the artist’s Water Mill, New York, studio. The name Dever chose for this body of work, To Look at Things in Bloom, is adapted from a line of verse in the Loveliest of Trees by the English classical scholar and poet, A. E. Housman (1859-1936). These paintings continue the artist’s exploration of nature, inspired by his surroundings from his childhood in Los Angeles to his present-day home in Eastern Long Island. In the exhibition catalogue essay, Gail Levin writes: “Not surprisingly, Dever’s new pictures do not seek to replicate nature, but instead vibrate between representation and abstraction, a kind of rhythmic dance expressing both what he later recalls in his mind’s eye and, simultaneously, how exhilarated he feels while he loses himself in nature. He relies upon self-discipline or self-study, some of which he has absorbed from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
