Brandt Gallery is delighted to present, “False Meridian”, a two-person exhibition featuring Ohio-based artists Aaron Troyer and Jolene Powell. In this new body of work, both artists render naturalistic scenes, however Troyer’s paintings skirt the line between familiar and fantastical, whilst Powell’s work constructs atmospheres that are at once grounded in materiality and suffused with metaphysical resonance. 

In navigation and geography, "meridians" are the invisible vertical lines that help us determine exactly where we are on the earth. A true meridian is an imaginary north-south line on Earth's surface connecting the geographic North and South Poles, crucial for surveying and mapping.  A “false meridian” refers to the direction a compass needle is actually showing as well as any line you treat as North, even though it’s slightly off.  Landscape painters often navigate these meridians through their unique lens- capturing the Earth’s rhythms and formations and conveying it in their distinctive styles. With varying degrees of naturalism and mediation, both Troyer and Powell favor an authentic response to nature in their artistic practice. Although landscape painting dates to antiquity, the genre remained popular among early Modernist artists, with recent trends in contemporary painting alluding to a widespread desire to slow down, distort, or even rupture the act of seeing. Troyer’s work suggests that painting remains a powerful site not only for image-making, but for reckoning with what lies just outside clarity—whether psychological, ecological, or metaphysical. His lean towards the strange, subconscious dream world of surrealism is a fitting subject for the seemingly and often unreal paradoxes to life as we know it today. In her practice, Powell considers anyone who engages with the landscape, in any form, to be both a documentarian and a political artist, as nature is ever changing; continually, reshaped by human presence and intervention. 

Throughout Powell’s landscapes she utilizes horizons as symbolic thresholds, and bodies of water- luminous, restorative sources, that also bear the heavy memory of human calamities. This newest body of work also reintroduces the cycles of the Sun and Moon. These celestial objects serve as markers of transformation, symbols of renewal, and reminders of our small yet resonant place in the cosmos. Powell works primarily in acrylic paint, beginning each panel piece by drawing a contour line derived from direct observation. Then, she integrates traditional painting methods with printmaking strategies, utilising a brayer roller to glaze thin veils of paint atop the panel that soften and unify the surface. She also employs monotype-inspired blotting techniques to imprint textures that evoke the rugged surfaces of rock and earth. 

This latest opus from artist Aaron Troyer represents a creative shift, both formal and figurative, for his practice, as he presents a fascinating array of visual phenomena from foreground to background. Once flattened features have grown increasingly dimensional, with a stronger focus on dynamic lighting, playful textures, and deepened space. Imbued with personality, the plants become main characters against the theatrical setting of exaggerated scales and varying picture planes, beckoning the viewer into Troyer’s saturated, alternate reality. The spectrum of Troyer’s palette has also broadened to incorporate darker natural tones, further pushing the contrast between subject and setting. He has also begun experimenting with using gesso with granite and marble sand on different elements of his subjects to provide another layer of texture and depth. 

“False Meridian” is on exhibit from Friday, February 6th through March 20th, during gallery hours, Wednesday to Friday 11am-5pm, Saturday to Sunday from 1-5pm, and by private appointment. There will be an opportunity to meet the artists from 5-7:30pm on Friday, February 6th. A virtual catalog is also available. Private appointments and virtual catalogs can be requested by emailing brgalleries@gmail.com or calling 614.223.1655. 

Aaron Troyer is a painter and musician based in Columbus, Ohio. Primarily working in acrylic, Troyer often references house plants and flowers that serve as main characters  in imaginary scenes with interdependency on one another. Troyer earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from The Ohio State University and has been increasingly focused on large-scale exterior mural paintings.

Jolene Powell is a landscape painter based in Marietta, Ohio and also serves as the McCoy Professor of Art and Director of Gallery 310 at Marietta College, Ohio. Her acrylic paintings are a play between simultaneous geological pathways, weather mysteries, and sensory shifts. Powell received her Master of Fine Arts from Boston University, and has an extensive national exhibition record.