Elements Adrift is Anne Seelbach’s first solo exhibition at Gallery North. It features oil and acrylic paintings that reflect her lifelong fascination with the seasons, tides, and marine life, as well as her recent interest in the Earth’s elements. Comprised of three of Seelbach’s distinct series from the last ten years, Elements Adrift fluctuates between representation and abstraction. In her first series, the artist explores the shoreline. Stylized motifs of fish, gaskets, and netting populate the layered surfaces. Drawn from her time walking alongside the ocean, these works silently represent the slow degradation of our natural resources; here is the muck of pollution; over there are the piquant colors of chemicals mixing with sea water. Seelbach’s brownish hues, deep blues, and rusty reds, layered upon stenciled forms both man-made and natural, provide a sense of loss while offering a conservationist’s razor-thin glimmer of hope. In her second series, the artist shifts her attention to tidal pools and the majestic power of the moon. Based on her repeated visits to Monhegan Island in Maine, Seelbach’s works, such as In the Moon Reflection Life Begins, seem to draw awe-inspiring energy from the moonlight. The artist is endlessly fascinated by how this energy drives her imagination. These canvasses are richly expressive of a dark power and resonate in many ways with the third series featured in the exhibition. Reflecting her most recent work, the third group of works in Elements Adrift shows Seelbach digging into the periodic table, examining each element one by one – iron, carbon, mercury – through painterly abstraction. There is an ebb and flow throughout this exhibition. Seelbach’s paintings move from representation to abstraction, from hope to despair, and from the natural to the personal. Her richly layered artworks are endless, and require the type of deep looking that might seriously affect our inner self.

In conjunction with Elements Adrift, Gallery North will also host a lecture on the marine ecology of New York’s waterways by Patricia Woodruff from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University.

Based in North Haven, Anne Seelbach holds an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York, and a BA from New York University. She has taught at the University of Rhode Island, Northeastern University, Emerson College, The Newark Museum, and the Parrish Art Museum. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and can be found in many major public and private collections including the Newark Museum and the Lyman Allyn Museum.