Planet on the Prairie

Artists

John Dilg

Press release

Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present Planet on the Prairie, the gallery’s third solo exhibition by Iowa-based painter John Dilg. 

A river is flowing through a rugged terrain. The land is hilly and vegetation sparse, but not inhospitable. The water is clean but appears brown because the soil is peaty. The stream is fast and roaring, racing down the hill and over a waterfall that drops into a dark pool. Froth is forming on its surface. The greenery is northern. You can see ferns and some deciduous trees. The time is autumn. Frost hasn’t set yet, but the anticipation of winter is already in the air. There is a large tree overlooking the river.

The above describes the scene set by Inversnaid, a poem by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) written after his visit to the Scottish Highland (“burn” is a stream in Scottish). But it could very well be a description of a painting by John Dilg, Nine-Mile Falls for instance, with a waterfall dropping into a dark pool, rock-strewn hills and northern plants. While Hopkins and Dilg come from significantly different time, place and society, the worlds they depict rhyme in certain ways.