Houghton University is proud to announce the exhibition of artist Nick Blosser’s paintings titled “Territory” on display from September 2nd through October 9th in the Ortlip Gallery at the Center for the Arts in Houghton, NY. All are welcome to attend the exhibit’s opening reception on September 2nd from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. with a Gallery Talk beginning promptly at 7:00 p.m. Light refreshments will be served. If you are unable to attend that evening, the gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m.

Blosser received both his Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees from The Ohio State University and went on to teach Art at Milligan College in Johnson City, Tennessee from 1991-2021. He has exhibited extensively throughout the country from New York City to Portland. In 1985 he received the prestigious Rome Prize and was selected as a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. He has received multiple fellowships and endowments including the 1991-92 National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship. He is represented by PDX Contemporary Art Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

In recent years, the subject of Blosser’s paintings is what some might call “the everyday.” Blosser writes, “Each painting could be a new experience because I was getting my ideas from a source that provided ever replenishing motifs – nature. And, I could still use my love of form, shape and color and their abstract possibilities, but wed them with stuff from the natural world that many people encounter on an everyday basis but take for granted. From that time forward every new painting became a unique experience, and I’ve never become bored with painting nature as a starting point.”

To more fully appreciate Blosser’s work one must suspend realism and view it as abstract. In other words, Blosser removes layers of what the literalist perceives, distilling his subject to the raw, bare essence. Somehow, by this stripping process, he draws out a far deeper beauty that many of us are prone to overlook. Richard Cummings wrote in the July 2011 issue of Ruminate Magazine that part of Blosser’s artistic brilliance is his ability to make his subject matter something that we all can relate to and feel a sense of familiarity with. Cummings states, “Far from a sentimental experience of nature, Blosser peers more deeply, seeing beyond the outward forms, allowing us a glimpse of the spiritual essences of the rolling hills and countryside. The trees, the bushes and even the hills are filled with presence and beauty. Though his subject is northeast Tennessee, the world that Blosser reveals in his egg tempera and watercolor landscapes describe the subliminal mystery of every landscape. His work points to the ‘more’ of existence and rejects the ‘only’ of the superficial.”

Nick Blosser, Mid-Winter Landscape, Egg tempera, 2020.

Nick Blosser, Enormous Fallen Limb, Watercolor, 2012.