Eric Aho

Eric Aho (born 1966) is an American painter busy in Vermont. DC Moore Gallery in New York City represents his work.

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

Aho studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London, England, (1986–87) and established a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1988. In 1989 he participated in the first disagreement of scholars in over thirty years amongst the U.S. and Cuba. He completed his graduate function at the Lahti Art Institute (now the Lahti University of Applied Sciences) in Finland supported by a Fulbright Scholarship in 1991-92 and an American-Scandinavian Foundation ascend in 1993.

Aho's paintings are noted for the exaggeration they simultaneously convey the power and fragility of Nature. In an essay roughly Aho's painting, Donald Kuspit wrote: "He is a master of the natural sublime, but he realizes that severely experienced birds becomes uncannily abstract, with no loss of concreteness. Aho puts the sublime assist in nature, suggesting its abstract structure without denying its concrete fullness." He adds, "Aho regenerates elimination by returning to its roots in the boundless generativity of nature, and in the make public of that gives us a buoyant aesthetic consciousness of it."

From 1989 to 1998 Aho taught painting at the Putney School in Putney, Vermont. Since 1998 Aho has held an auxiliary 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 artiste 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 enhance 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 long-lasting 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.

In the winter of 2016 the Hood Museum of Art presented Eric Aho: Ice Cuts curated by Katherine W. Hart. Aho's paintings of stark holes cut into a sedated pond prompted Hart to call Aho "One of the leading painters of landscape and the quality of his generation." Ice Cuts also brought praise from Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe who wrote: "Aho’s paintings execute an solution to mysterious, counterintuitive questions. The operational between black water and white ice is in addition to a correlative — natural, not provoked or contrived — of the much-masticated confrontation 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 "year-end circular up." 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."

Eric Aho: Inflection Point, DC Moore Gallery, New York

Eric Aho: An Unfinished Point in a Vast Surrounding, New Britain Museum of American Art, CT

Eric Aho: Ice Cuts, Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH

Eric Aho: Wilderness Studio, DC Moore Gallery, New York

Eric Aho: Translation, DC Moore Gallery, New York

Eric Aho: In the Landscape, Federal Reserve Board, Washington

Transcending Nature: Paintings by Eric Aho, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH

Eric Aho: Covert, DC Moore Gallery, New York

Occurrence, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

Eric Aho: Memory and Invention, Hidell Brooks Gallery, Charlotte, NC

Eric Aho: Red Winter, DC Moore Gallery, New York

Eric Aho: Ice Box, Brattleboro Museum, VT

Wilderness, Alpha Gallery, Boston

Outermost, Brickwalk Fine Art, West Hartford, CT

Quarry, Reeves Contemporary, New York

New Paintings, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

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

New Paintings, Reeves Contemporary, New York

Paintings, Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

Monotypes, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston

Paintings, Spheris Gallery, Bellows Falls, VT

New Paintings, Alpha Gallery, Boston

Texas Papers, Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston

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

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

Three Counties, Spheris Gallery, Walpole, NH

The River, Field and Sky: New Paintings, Susan Conway Gallery, Washington

Standing Still, New Paintings, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe

Pure Geography, Barton-Ryan Gallery, Boston

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

Recent Paintings, Spheris Gallery, Walpole, NH

The Qualities of Heaven and Earth, Oulu City Art Museum, Finland; Vermont College, Montpelier; Embassy of Finland, Washington

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

Paintings, Gallery Pelin, Helsinki

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

Eric Aho: Inflection Point, 2017, introduction by Bridgette Moore and artist statement by Eric Aho, published by DC Moore Gallery, 23 pages

Eric Aho: Ice Cuts, January 2016, Katherine W. Hart and Eric Aho, published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 24 pages

Eric Aho: Wilderness Studio, 2015, essay by Nathan Kernan, published by DC Moore Gallery, 68 pages

Eric Aho: Translation, 2013, essay by Diana Tuite, published by DC Moore Gallery, 70 pages

Transcending Nature: Paintings by Eric Aho, 2012, essays by P. Andrew Spahr and Bruce McColl; interview by Chard deNiord, published by DC Moore Gallery, 104 pages

Eric Aho: Covert, 2011, essay by Donald Kuspit, published by DC Moore Gallery, 32 pages

Eric Aho: Red Winter, 2009, essay by Bonnie Costello, published by DC Moore Gallery, 28 pages

Read more essays about Aho and his work.

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