Isabelle Abbot & Frank Phillips at 3North

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ISABELLE ABBOT & FRANK PHILLIPS

Exhibition at 3North

MARCH 22, 2023 - APRIL 28, 2023

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Isabelle Abbot & Frank Phillips

Current Exhibition at 3North

Dear Friends of PBG,

We are excited to share a new in-person exhibition for Page Bond Gallery, located at 4015 Fitzhugh Avenue, the home of the 3North Design Firm!

The current exhibition features paintings by Charlottesville artists, Isabelle Abbot and Frank Phillips and will remain up thru Friday, April 28th.

3North is happy to have visitors come by the 1st Floor gallery BY APPOINTMENT.

Appointments can be made during the hours of Monday – Friday 10am – 5PM by emailing me at page@pagebondgallery.com, or calling me at (804) 357-7169. Other times may also be available.

Enjoy this exhibition catalog and please let us know if you have any thoughts or questions. Feel free to share the catalog link with others so we can spread the word about the exhibition.

We will be announcing many more events at 3North - art openings as well as artist talks - in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Thank you all again.

With kind regards,

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Page

ISABELLE ABBOT

Distant Showers, 2017

Oil on canvas

30 x 30 inches

$3,800

INQUIRE

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ISABELLE ABBOT

Spring Clarity, 2023

Oil on canvas

28 x 32 inches

$3,800

INQUIRE

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ISABELLE ABBOT

Arriving, 2023

Oil on canvas

46 x 32 inches

SOLD

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ISABELLE ABBOT

Rosie Sky and Rolling Hills, 2020

Oil on canvas

36 x 48 inches

$6,600

INQUIRE

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ISABELLE ABBOT

View Out to the Water, 2020

Oil on canvas

36 x 48 inches

$6,600

INQUIRE

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ISABELLE ABBOT

Artist Statement

Every painting is a series of questions I pose to myself, about the landscape, about my relationship to my environment, about the specificities of where I am. How does this moment feel? How does the atmosphere, the topography, the light affect me? How can I communicate these sensations honestly and clearly? The answers come through editing, through paring down and cutting out extraneous detail to discover what is essential about a place.

The answer also comes through using paint as an investigative tool that can take on the textures and colors of earth and sky, allowing me to reconstruct my surroundings on the canvas. All the work begins with direct observation and, by asking and answering questions, grows into a painting that does not illustrate but embodies the qualities of a particular moment in a particular landscape. I am a painter of a very specific region and I want my viewers to feel instinctively where these paintings come from. I am paying homage, as well as feeding my own need to be oriented, to be grounded, to know where I am and to feel connected to that place.

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ISABELLE ABBOT

Abbreviated CV

EDUCATION

2011 MFA Painting, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

2005 BA Studio Art, University of Virginia (with Distinction)

SELECT EXHIBITIONS

2016 Westminster Canterbury, Richmond, VA

Landing, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA

2015 Summer Scenes, Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA

2014 Knowing A Place, Cleo Driver Miller Gallery, Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA

2013 Surveying Light, Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA

Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA

J Fergeson Gallery, Farmville, VA

Bridgewater College Gallery, Bridgewater, VA

2011 New Work, J Fergeson Gallery, Farmville, VA

2009 Homeland, J Fergeson Gallery, Farmville, VA

2008 Greenwood, The North Gallery, Crozet, VA

Reminiscence, The Gallery at Fifth and Water, Charlottesville, VA

2007 Horizons II, The Gallery at Fifth and Water, Charlottesville, VA

2006 Ridgelines, The Mezzanine Gallery at New Dominion Bookshop, Charlottesville, VA

AWARDS & HONORS

2013 “Best of Cville” award for Best Visual Artist

SELECT COLLECTIONS

University of Virginia Health Systems

Capital One

Dominion Energy

Boar’s Head

Keswick

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FRANK PHILLIPS

Memo 2, 2017

Acrylic and pencil on canvas

70 x 52 inches

SOLD

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FRANK PHILLIPS

Roscoe, 2013

Acrylic and pencil on canvas

62 x 50 inches

$7,000

INQUIRE

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FRANK PHILLIPS

Mezz, 2019

Acrylic and graphite on paper

22 x 16 inches

$1,250 framed

INQUIRE

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FRANK PHILLIPS

Smudge Pot, 2012

Acrylic and graphite on canvas

68 x 62 inches

$9,000

INQUIRE

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FRANK PHILLIPS

Artist Statement

My work uses a flat plane to convey the visual ideas of construction, mass, and volume. The formally arranged imagery is all invented, but takes cues from architecture and engineering (materials and the structures themselves), as well as the erosion and the decay of perceived ruin. The display of process is an integral component to the work; it tracks the time, mistakes, revisions, and the experience used to arrive to a resolved composition. The end results are pieces that embrace surface and relate the ideas of: the used, the weathered, the discarded, and the beaten. I aim to create a quiet calm to the work that is still able to convey a stoic presence.

At its core, the compositions are about physicality and decision making. The immediacy of drawing and painting allows me to attack spaces on the canvas. The size of the plane forces me to use my entire body; the act of painting, drawing, erasing, and sanding all require a certain balance of touch and force. One idea completion may necessitate removal, thereby initiating another physical activity. As an artist, I need the action, and the work needs to be work; the labor is chronicled in the surface as removed elements are never really gone, only ghosts of the materials’ (pencil, charcoal, and paint) permanence.

Compositions are constructed primarily with line. Line acts as a device for the illusion of suspension as well as enclosing or mapping a shape. There emerges a printmaking look to the surface (at times with embossed marks) achieved through rubbings and other treated materials. Subsequently, the compositions read as a sort of blueprint. The line-play between the “exact” straightedge is offset by the “imperfect” hand and creates a diagrammed visual tension.

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