In this exhibition, we bring together two local artists. Fred Dylla is a new-comer to our space, whose medium is white-line woodcuts. Howard Eberle specializes in dry-brush watercolor and is a resident artist and repeat exhibitor at the gallery. Both explore color, texture, and the play between realism and abstraction to depict coastal and rural subjects from Delmarva and beyond.

     Fred Dylla is the Executive Director Emeritus of the American Institute of Physics. He spent 50 years as an enquiring physicist helping to design and build scientific facilities for astronomy, fusion energy, particle and nuclear physics, medical, and materials research. For many years he admired the artwork of his two daughters, Kim and Sarah, both graduates of the UVa School of Fine arts. He began painting to have something to talk about with them. He finds the white-line woodcut medium is a perfect blend of his two passions of woodworking and watercolor painting. Fred carves a strong outline image into the surface of a woodblock then applies watercolor within each individual carved shape. Next, the paper is laid over the block and rubbed to transfer the image. Successive layers of paint are used to enhance the textures of the wood grain and the print paper. Fred is inspired by 17th and 18th-century Japanese woodblock printing as well as the “Provincetown Printers” led by the Swedish artist B.J.O. Nordfeldt in the early 1900s.

     Howard Eberle is a self-taught artist who has been painting in transparent watercolor since 1973. He started painting professionally in 1990 after a career in retail display, where he learned composition, design, and color. These elements have had a major influence on Eberle’s style which he describes as “abstract realism”. He eliminates details to get to the essence of the subject matter, incorporates strong shadows, and often juxtaposes a finely detailed subject on an abstract background. The artist states, “The spirit of my work lies in dramatic composition of simple subject matter… It is the Japanese philosophy of simplicity that has most influenced my present style.” Howard loves to paint anything textural and aged like the peeled paint of an old barn, the rusty patina of an anchor, or the weathered rope on an old Chesapeake skipjack. He finds that the time-intensive dry-brush technique that uses minimal water and a brush with very few bristles is the only way to achieve his spectacular variety of textures.