Froelick Gallery is pleased to present recent large scale paintings by Benny Fountain. Fountain was born in Moscow, ID in the middle of The Palouse, and is based in Spokane, WA where he teaches painting at Whitworth University. Fountain's recent paintings address his fascination with the structure of painted compositions and the elemental forms of his regional landscape.
EVENTS WITH THE ARTIST:
First Thursday Reception, August 7, 5-8pm.
Exhibition Talk, Saturday, August 9, 11am.
Consolation: Paintings from The Hill
I grew up in the Palouse region of Idaho and have always known and loved its special charisma. I’ve also lived away for many years, including ten years in Texas, but each summer I’d return to paint in the Palouse hills.
On one such summer return, a local farmer with an expansive spirit gave me the go ahead to build a studio-shack at a high point on his land.
After the summer, back in Texas, I dashed off a pencil sketch of the structure I had in mind and mailed it to my father. A couple of months passed and he told me he’d built it and perched it on a foundation of boulders he’d cobbled together from the hillside.
By some kind of gravitational pull I’ve now found myself back in the Palouse full-time. In my first winter back, I limited myself to the language of line to find the structure and space of the land. Spring came and my lines became green against a stark-white ground. The summer sun revealed a contrasting drama of light and shadow. After this, each season brought chromatic displays that pressed my attention to the full orchestration of color.
Benny Fountain June 2025
Charles Froelick's notes from Fountain's August 9, 2025 exhibit talk: 24 years ago when he first moved from rural Moscow to Portland for school, Portland was chaotic and loud and often disconcerting to his quiet demeanor, and he focussed on making small, realist paintings. He said that “realism” helped ground him during the disruption. Now that he lives back in the Palouse, being in a more calm phase of his life, and thus he's feeling more adventurous and able to experiment with abstraction. Also back decades ago he used the language of color and solid shapes to further present “stability,” and being grounded; now he is using the “language of line” to activate the paintings with dynamism and circulation.
The other large paintings in this show are monochrome- black and white, or shades of green. Benny talked about making a song out a few simple notes, or chords and being able to make beautiful music out of just a few notes. Music, like paintings do not need to be complex or complicated to be beautiful. In “Hermit’s Wealth” he allowed 4 “notes” or 4 very powerful colors that he did not want to complicate by mixing into myriad variations: He used Naples yellow, Ultramarine blue, Chromium Oxide green and added earth with Burnt Sienna.
“Hermit’s Wealth” was also painted when there were not strong shadows, and the light was very even across the rolling hills. His grandfather was a crop duster and taught flight lessons- Benny flew with him often, so Benny is very familiar with areal views of the region and the many daily and seasonal light changes. This painting was however very much painted from perspectives “on the ground.” Benny moved the canvas to several spots on The Hill while painting different zones of the painting from different perspectives.
