The Artwork of Tony Angell and Ewoud de Groot
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From Woods and Shores: Exhibition: From Woods and Shores: The Artwork of Tony Angell and Ewoud de Groot American sculptor Tony Angell and Dutch painter Ewoud de Groot communicate a passion and appreciation of the spectacular and enduring beauty found in nature. These artists share an intimate knowledge of their subject matter born of many long hours of observation in the wild. Although diverse in style and medium, Angell and de Groot eloquently translate their artistic vision into tangible form.
Angell’s devotion to his subject matter grew out of his childhood in Southern California, where he spent many hours sketching wildlife in the canyons and hills outside Los Angeles. After moving to Seattle to attend college, Angell found himself inspired by his new home, and he branched out from his illustration career to embrace figurative sculpture. In stone and bronze, he reveals forms and behavior that express the power, energy, and grace of Pacific Northwest fauna.
Strength and elegance characterize Angell’s work, which is often as much about content as it is material, with the interplay of these two factors resulting in a unique illumination of both—whether it be limestone beautifully transformed into a magnificent raven, or a piece of serpentine expertly cut away to reveal a pair of flounders.
He expresses the personalities of his subjects by incorporating the unique character and energy of his materials. “The stone itself, by its shape, its color, the way it looks in different light at different times of day, offers hint of how it can be defined,” Angell once said.
For de Groot, sense of place is also integral to his art, which is deeply informed by the time he spent in coastal Holland with his family on an old Dutch shrimp cutter. Like Angell, the young de Groot took to drawing the world he saw around him. His interest was primarily avian, a focus that has endured. “At the moment, I am increasingly fascinated by large groups of birds,” says de Groot. “These large groups have an almost mathematical formation in the way they move and interact, which comes back to the influence of pattern, structure, and style.” To translate these formal inspirations into compositions, de Groot works with the layering of warm and cool colors, to create chromatic symmetry and depth. These components, integrated with de Groot’s meticulous attention to rhythm and structure, result in oil-on-linen pieces that strike a graceful balance between realism and abstraction—bridging, as the artist himself put it, “the traditional and the modern.” Tony Angell’s sculpture can be found at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, which also granted him a Master Artist Award. He is co-author (along with John M. Marzluff) of the book In the Company of Crows and Ravens. Ewoud de Groot’s paintings have been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, from his native Netherlands to Belgium and the UK. They can be seen in collections of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the head office for Unilever in Rotterdam, Netherlands, among others. For more information, contact:
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