ALAN HURLEY: NEW WORK

Thursday, October 7 - Friday, October 29, 2004

OPENING RECEPTION:
Thursday, October 7, 2004, 8pm - 10pm

Alan Hurley grew up in rural Kitsap County, Washington, helping his family raise pigs, chickens and a goat and sleeping in a cardboard box "rocketship" in his front yard, in the shadow of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Keyport and the Nuclear Submarine Base, Bangor. As a child viewing a dramatic cloud formation, Hurley would be left debating if what he was seeing was the nuclear attack he feared would destroy his home or the harbinger of the Second Coming of Christ.

On the surface, Hurley's paintings seem to have a science fiction feel. However, they are composed more of scientific fact. Hurley concentrates on real machines and existent technology and places them in real settings. The settings he creates for the characters that populate his paintings are a synthesis of the natural world, designs found in the wallpaper of a fancy restaurant bathroom and geometric patterns found at the atomic level.

An important theme in Hurley's work is the often conflicting relationship between the technological and natural worlds. By placing high-tech objects in incongruous wilderness settings, he highlights the complex relationship that exists between civilization and wilderness. Hurley's paintings offer a vision of a possible symbiotic balance between the natural and the technological.

www.alanhurley.com