To stand before Adam Guy’s large Vineyard landscapes is to feel nature’s very spirit. They are not an exact representation; rather, they are an elemental response to wonder. Guy walked the Island’s woods and shorelines this spring, gathering inspiration for his current show at Stillpoint, on view through July 22: “I took a couple of weeks to simply observe and connect with what’s going to move me. I go through life connected to nature, and then try to share that with people so they can feel it when they are in front of my paintings.”
Guy says, “These landscapes emerged from sustained observation — where light, atmosphere, and memory gradually dissolve the boundary between the physical and the imagined. The resulting works inhabit a space beyond representation. Trees become gestures. Water becomes movement. Light becomes memory. Together, they form ‘Unreal,’ a body of paintings inviting viewers to experience nature not simply as landscape but as presence.”
This presence is supremely evident in “North Road.” The bulging rocks pulse with energy, and the overhanging trees cast animated shadows that dance along the ground ahead of us. The dappled sunlight and shadows, in seductive shades of blue and violet, evoke the cool air blowing in through the car window as we drive down the familiar roadway.
There is a quieter sense to the very large piece “Unreal,” which shares the exhibition’s title. Here, we walk through the woods, stopping inches from a tree. There is the barest hint of human presence in the boat and shack far off in the distance. The sunset pouring in from the right gives the scene a magical quality, illuminating Guy’s strong colors with bright highlights of gold, pink, and bright turquoise.
Guy lays the groundwork for the stories we imagine when looking at his enigmatic scenes. Who are the two figures paddling in the canoes over the roiling waves in “Msquepunauket”? And what will happen to them? The painting was inspired by a moment at Msquepunauket, the Wampanoag name for Squibnocket Beach. Guy explains, “There was a big storm coming in, and these two kids grabbed the canoes and were like, ‘Yeah, we’re going in.’ The waves were pumping, a huge fog bank was coming in, and it was getting toward sunset. It reminded me of my childhood. I grew up on the North Shore of Kauai [fourth-largest Hawaiian island], where we fished and night-dived and were crazy.” Watching these two boys, Guy says, “opened my heart up to the rawness of being a kid and working with nature. They ended up making it through the waves. I love it when we can work with nature so it becomes part of our lives.”
Guy says of his art, “They’re not depictions of reality. They’re better than reality.” The landscape “Cliff” was inspired by a view from where Guy stays up-Island. He uses colors not in nature to capture the breathtaking view at the edge of the land, where it breaks off, with the vast ocean filling the rest of the composition. He says of the painting, “The scene is the complete cycle of life, with parts of the cliff falling into the water, the sun pulling the water up, and the rain pouring it down. I love change, our impermanence, and the world around us. It allows me to pull back from the whirlwind, recognizing that we are a speck of dust in the flow of things.”
Guy moves into abstraction in his tall painting “Space in Between.” Here, we look up at the tangled tree branches, which entwine to create bright, creamy, golden “negative” spaces like pieces in a geometric jigsaw puzzle that fit snugly into place.
Ultimately, in whatever form, nature is Guy’s sustenance. He hopes viewers will come away with “awe, a little childlike wonder, and a sigh of openheartedness toward nature and one another. I believe that’s my primary purpose in life: to uplift others and keep the smiles rolling.”
“Unreal” is on view at Stillpoint in West Tisbury through July 22.
