Chester Arnold: "Tributaries"

Chester Arnold: Tributaries North Gallery

Chris Doyle: You Should Lie Down Now and Remember the Forest South Gallery and Media Room On view January 6 – March 2, 2024 Opening reception: Saturday, January 6 from 3 – 5pm; artist talks at 4pm

San Francisco: Catharine Clark Gallery opens its 2024 program with solo exhibitions by Chris Doyle and Chester Arnold that powerfully reflect on nature, memory, loss, and healing. Doyle’s exhibition, You Should Lie Down Now and Remember the Forest, is on view in the South Gallery and Media Room and features watercolors, animation, and installation. Arnold’s exhibition of paintings, Tributaries, is on view in the North Gallery, with additional drawings on view in EXiT. Both exhibitions are concurrently on view January 6 – March 2, 2024, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 6 from 3 – 5pm; artist talks at 4pm.

Chester Arnold infuses depths of feeling in crashing waves, cavernous ravines, and 400-year-old oak trees. His expressive oil paintings and drawings often depict psychologically and emotionally rich landscapes, and he writes that his work “reflects a mind’s natural and unrestrained adventures with friction and gravity at its core.” Several paintings in his last solo exhibition, Complications (2020), depicted dramatic and tumultuous seascapes – capsized ships and rafts adrift, flotsam jettisoned in the swell – suggesting an upturned and unstable world. The paintings in Tributaries – on view in the North Gallery – depict water in seemingly calmer states, with rivers and bays stretching and meandering through green banks. However, his landscapes suggest precariousness beneath the surface.

Arnold created this body of work shortly after a loved one’s illness. After an extended break, Arnold returned to the studio. His newest landscapes reflect on passage and connection: tributaries flow into one another; starlings amass in murmuration; old-growth trees stretch their roots and branches, inviting an onlooker to touch. Arnold writes: “The works in Tributaries are driven by a metaphorical instinct that guides everything in my life. Painting may not be science, but the gifts of its agency, in both practice and appreciation, have been both balm and elixir in a challenging time. The paintings that appear here flowered in an atmosphere of restoration and recovery.”

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CHESTER ARNOLD Biography Chester Arnold infuses depths of feeling in crashing waves, cavernous ravines, and 400-year-old oak trees. His expressive oil paintings and drawings often depict psychologically and emotionally rich landscapes, and he writes that his work “reflects a mind’s natural and unrestrained adventures with friction and gravity at its core.

In 2022, the artist was the subject of an extensive survey exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum, California titled Reports to the Contrary: A Persistent Vision Paintings 1971 - 2021 by Chester Arnold. In March 2018, Arnold’s work was featured in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the Academy of Arts and Letters Gallery in New York, NY, and was honored with an award through the Art Purchase Program.

In 2022, Kelly’s Cove Press published The Daily Feast, a monograph of paintings in collaboration with poet Bart Schneider. In 2017, Kelly’s Cove Press again published a monograph of Arnold’s work titled Evidence: Painting by Chester Arnold 1989 – 2017. In 2010, the Nevada Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition, On Earth as It Is in Heaven, with an accompanying catalogue. Additional solo exhibitions include the American University Museum, Katzen Art Center, Washington, D.C.; and the Sonoma County Museum, California. In 2008, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art highlighted Arnold and other recipients of the 2005 Eureka Fellowship.

In December 2019, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired Beyond This (2018), a major painting from Arnold’s 2018 exhibition Borderline. Arnold’s work is represented in multiple public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, the Tacoma Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Arnold lives in Sonoma, California, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2003.

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Chester Arnold, Tributaries, 2024. Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco CA. Installation image by John Janca.

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Chester Arnold, Tributaries, 2024. Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco CA. Installation image by John Janca.

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Chester Arnold, Root, 2019/2023. Oil on linen. 56 x 64 inches. $34,000

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration I :The Summoning, 2023. Oil on linen. 36 x 42 inches. $22,000

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Chester Arnold, Tributaries, 2023. Oil on linen. 72 x 60 inches. $38,000 Catharine Clark Gallery | cclarkgallery.com | 8

Chester Arnold, Visitation In Late November, 2023. Oil on birch panel. 7 x 5 inches. $2,400 Catharine Clark Gallery | cclarkgallery.com | 9

Chester Arnold, Murmuration IV: Sarabande, 2023. Oil on linen mounted on panel. 8 x 10 inches. $3,200

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration V: Passacaglia, 2023. Oil on linen panel. 11 x 14 inches. $3,800

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Chester Arnold, Prelude, 2023. Oil on birch panel. 5 x 7 inches. $2,400

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Chester Arnold, Crossing, 2023. Oil on linen panel. 8 x 10 inches. $3,200

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Chester Arnold, Murmeration III: Am Perlacher Forst, 2023. Oil on linen panel. 11 x 14 inches. $3,800

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Chester Arnold, Take Me To The River (Baptism of the Hopeful), 2023. Oil on linen panel. 14 x 11 inches. $3,800

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration VIII: Forbidding Mourning, 2023. Oil on linen. 22 x 18 inches. $6,500 Catharine Clark Gallery | cclarkgallery.com | 16

Chester Arnold, Murmuration VI: Bouree, 2023. Oil on linen. 22 x 18 inches. $6,500

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration IX: Cantabile, 2023. Oil on linen panel. 18 x 22 inches. $6,500

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Chester Arnold, Visitation, 2023. Oil on linen. 72 x 60 inches. $38,000

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Chester Arnold, A Beaver’s Errand, 2023. Oil on linen. 72 x 60 inches. $38,000 Catharine Clark Gallery | cclarkgallery.com | 20

Additional Works Available

Chester Arnold, Mad River, 2014. Oil on linen with artist handmade frame. 18 x 56 inches. $18,000

Chester Arnold, In The Current, 2023. Oil on linen. 18 x 46 inches. $15,000

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Chester Arnold, A Murder of Crows, 2023. Oil on linen. 44 x 36 inches. $22,000

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Chester Arnold, January, 2019. Oil on linen panel. 48 x 72 inches. $34,000

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Chester Arnold, Perpetual Care, 2010/2023. Oil on linen. 46 x 56 inches. $24,000

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Chester Arnold, Tributary II : West-Running Brook, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 5 x 3 1/2 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Study For Tributary III, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 5 x 3 1/2 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Tributaries IV : Chesapeake BackBay, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 5 x 3 1/2 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Downstream : (Study for Tributaries.), 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 5 x 3 1/2 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Study For Tributaries V: Slow Moving Currents, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 5 x 3 1/2 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration I, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 3 1/2 x 5 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Murmuration II, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 3 1/2 x 5 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Crossing II : from where the fires burn ceaselessly, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 3 1/2 x 5 inches. $950

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Chester Arnold, Take Me To The River watercolor, 2023. Watercolor on cotton paper. 3 1/2 x 5 inches. $950

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