Art – Abbie Sewall & Stefan Pastuhov

Stefan:

Stefan Pastuhov grew up in Harvard, Massachusetts. He graduated from the American School in Paris and returned to the U.S., where he received his BFA from Tufts University and the Boston School Museum School of Fine Arts. Stefan moved to Maine in 1984.  Stefan is a plein-air painter who loves the outdoors and paints on location year-round. It’s the beauty of changing light and seasons that appeal to him. He counts among his strongest influences: John Singer Sargent, Emile Gruppe, Edgar Paine, and Aldro T. Hibbard. He is a founding member of the plein-air painters of New England. His work has been featured on the covers of the L. L. Bean catalogues.  Images of Stefan’s paintings can be found on his website pastuhov.com, and can be contacted at pastuhov@tidewater.net. Stefan’s art is shown at Blue Hill Bay Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine, Bay View Gallery in Brunswick, Maine, The Vermont Artisan Gallery in Brattleboro, Vermont and The Berkeley Gallery in Warrenton,Virginia.

Abbie:
L I M I N A L S P A C E S

I am drawn to visual narratives that enhance our perceived reality by
creating a space – or a pause – in the viewer’s awareness of time and
experience. In Buddhism, “pausing” or “the pause” refers to a deliberate
moment of stillness and mindful presence.
The images in this show are from a body of work I call “Liminal Spaces,”
referring to a still-time place of contemplation between past and present; or
from a position that occupies both sides of a boundary or threshold. This is
the place I have occupied since age fifteen when the life and photographs
of my great-great grandmother, Emma D. Sewall (1836-1919), presented a
threshold between her past and the life I have chosen to live. If you believe
in reincarnation, ‘I am Emma in blue jeans.’

Some of these works stand alone as one image, while others are intuitively
stacked one top of the other. Either way, they must carry me to an interior
place of harmony, a momentary pause between here and there.

If my narrative images can briefly play a part in raising the viewer’s energy
frequency to connect more deeply with Beauty, environment and the
experience of love, I will have succeeded.

Art Opening & Celebration
Sunday August 3rd
4:00 pm

Stefan:

Abbie: