The Grenning Gallery is pleased to announce our 19th Annual Ben Fenske Solo Exhibition.

Cooks lane, the banner image for this exhibition, showcases the rural landscape of northern Bridgehampton, where fields of farmlands are prepped for sowing and harvest. A single white pickup truck drives along the road towards the viewer, beneath a sky adorned with puffy clouds. A nod towards the humble beauty that attracts so many to our region.

Ben Fenske typically spends several months each year here on the East End, painting our local landscapes on site, en plein air. This year, however, he welcomed his first child, and his new fatherly duties kept him close to home in Tuscany, where he painted this entire new body of work from memory. What resulted is a series of vividly colored paintings built from expressive, divisionist brushstrokes. It is a natural next step for an artist of Fenske’s caliber — after nineteen years spent painting our Sag Harbor landscape from life, he can now paint it from 4,000 miles away.

One of Fenske’s favorite spots to paint Out East is Dering Harbor on Shelter Island. Dering Herreshoff shows the moment a sailboat catches a puff of wind. The portrait style dimensions allow for a greater expanse of both the sky and the sea, showing the shifting colors of the water’s surface, especially towards the shallower water in the foreground. A single sailor crosses center frame, heading out to deeper waters as clouds gather overhead. The tall sails reflect onto the water below them, accentuating the verticality of the painting.

Shelter island yacht club takes a wider view of the Dering Harbor coastline at early morning. The sea is still, and every boat is resting at its mooring. The clubhouse for the yacht club, a small wood shingled structure with a low white-trim gable, sits unassumingly amongst the horizon line. Short, sweeping brushstrokes vibrate with energy, and appear to burst out from the center of the painting.

Wave takes the viewer to the Ocean, where the horizon line forms only where the vast sea meets the sky above. Fenske preserves a moment, as the cresting waves crash onto umber sand. Fenske’s distinct painting style layers staccato brush strokes in various colors to capture the ever shifting colors in natural light. His skies and seas are never just blue, they capture a spectrum of hues including, green, lavender, pink, and yellow.

One of the largest paintings in the show, “Montauk” takes a panoramic view of a crowded harbor. Various fishing boats are docked around the small peninsula of land while a large flock of seagulls gather overhead.

Newborn is a beautiful reflection of Ben Fenske’s recent fatherhood. It shows his long-time partner, Amy, carrying their newborn son across the Tuscan landscape they reside upon. The mostly bare deciduous tree reveals the subject was painted several months prior, in late winter or early spring. Still, the bright colors highlighted throughout the canvas transform a partially barren landscape into a celebration of new beginnings. Perhaps a reflection of the painter’s own joy over his growing family.

Together, these paintings trace a season unlike any other in Fenske's career — familiar shores rendered from thousands of miles away, filtered through memory and the first months of fatherhood. The result is some of the most vivid, emotionally charged work of his nineteen years at Grenning Gallery.