Eric Aho


Eric Aho is an American painter living in Vermont. in New York City represents his work.

Early life

Aho was born in Melrose, Massachusetts and moved to New Hampshire with his family in 1974. His father, whose parents had emigrated from Finland, worked for the Boston and Maine Railroad.

Studies

Aho studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London, England, and received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1988. In 1989 he participated in the first exchange of scholars in over thirty years between the U.S. and Cuba. He completed his graduate work at the Lahti Art Institute in Finland supported by a Fulbright Scholarship in 1991-92 and an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant in 1993.

Career

Aho's paintings are noted for the way they simultaneously convey the power and fragility of Nature. In an essay about Aho's painting, Donald Kuspit wrote: "He is a master of the natural sublime, but he realizes that intensely experienced nature becomes uncannily abstract, with no loss of concreteness. Aho puts the sublime back in nature, suggesting its abstract structure without denying its concrete fullness." He adds, "Aho regenerates abstraction by returning to its roots in the boundless generativity of nature, and with that gives us a fresh aesthetic consciousness of it."
From 1989 to 1998 Aho taught painting at the Putney School in Putney, Vermont. Since 1998 Aho has held an adjunct position as visiting lecturer in the Graduate Light Design Program at the University of the Arts in Helsinki, Finland, and has taught at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. He has been a visiting artist and critic at the Burren College of Art in County Clare, Ireland; the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in County Mayo Ireland; the Weir Farm National Historic Trust in Connecticut; Colgate University in Hamilton, New York; the National College of Art in Oslo, Norway; the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland; the St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Aho's exhibitions include the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine; the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; the McMullen Museum at Boston College; the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Nagoya, Japan; the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. The Oulu Museum of Art in Oulu, Finland; the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont; The Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH and the New Britain Museum of American Art, CT have presented solo exhibitions.

His paintings can be found in public collections throughout the country and abroad including the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Springfield Art Museum, the Currier Museum of Art, the Hood Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

''Ice Cuts''

In the winter of 2016 the Hood Museum of Art presented curated by Katherine W. Hart. Aho's paintings of stark holes cut into a frozen pond prompted Hart to call Aho "One of the leading painters of landscape and the environment of his generation." Ice Cuts also brought who wrote: "Aho’s paintings enact an answer to mysterious, counterintuitive questions. The dynamic between black water and white ice is also a correlative — natural, not forced or contrived — of the much-masticated tension in 20th-century art between abstract and representational imagery, between the real and the reproduced." Smee concluded by declaring the work "a major accomplishment."
In December 2016 Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe included Eric Aho: Ice Cuts in his "." Smee wrote, "Eric Aho’s paintings of plunge pools cut out of ice at the Hood at Dartmouth College were fresh, bold, subtle, and urgent."

Solo exhibitions

2017

, DC Moore Gallery, New York

2016

', New Britain Museum of American Art, CT
', Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH

2015

, DC Moore Gallery, New York

2013

, DC Moore Gallery, New York
Eric Aho: In the Landscape, Federal Reserve Board, Washington

2012

, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH

2011

, DC Moore Gallery, New York

2010

Occurrence, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee
Eric Aho: Memory and Invention, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC

2009

, DC Moore Gallery, New York
Eric Aho: Ice Box, Brattleboro Museum, VT

2008

Wilderness, Alpha Gallery, Boston
Outermost, Brickwalk Fine Art, West Hartford, CT

2007

Quarry, Reeves Contemporary, New York
New Paintings, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

2006

The Becoming Line: Pastel Drawings, Brickwalk Fine Art, West Hartford, CT
Copper Field Suite: New Monotypes, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT
Geography IV, Alpha Gallery, Boston
Paintings, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC

2005

New Paintings, Reeves Contemporary, New York
Paintings, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee
Monotypes, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston

2004

Paintings, Spheris Gallery, Bellows Falls, VT
New Paintings, Alpha Gallery, Boston
Texas Papers, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston

2003

The Overstory, Reeves Contemporary, New York
Paintings, Gallery BE’19, Helsinki
Recent Work, Paesaggio Gallery, West Hartford, CT
The Overhead Lake: New Paintings, Hargate Art Center, St. Paul's School, Concord, NH
Tremaine Gallery, Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, CT

2002

New Paintings, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe
Watershed: Paintings of the Connecticut River Valley, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, NH
Distances: Paintings of New England and Ireland, Alpha Gallery, Boston

2001

Three Counties, Spheris Gallery, Walpole, NH
The River, Field and Sky: New Paintings, Susan Conway Gallery, Washington

2000

Standing Still, New Paintings, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe
Pure Geography, Barton-Ryan Gallery, Boston

1999

The Distant Landscape: New Paintings, Spheris Gallery, Walpole, NH
New Helsinki Views, Galleria Pintura, Helsinki
A Passion for Winter: The Landscapes of Eric Aho, Susan Conway Gallery, Washington

1998

Recent Paintings, Spheris Gallery, Walpole, NH
The Qualities of Heaven and Earth, Oulu City Art Museum, Finland; Vermont College, Montpelier; Embassy of Finland, Washington

1996

Nocturnes: Recent Paintings by Eric Aho, Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington

1994

Paintings, Gallery Pelin, Helsinki

1991

Paintings from the Hemlock Ravine, Tyler Gallery, Marlboro College, VT

Reviews and Press Mentions

essays about Aho and his work.