Fine Art Gallery
Inherent in the Leaf is a reminder of the intertwining relationship between meditation, tea, and enlightenment. Like great art, exceptional Tea transcends words and is best experienced directly, here and now. Therefore, every true teahouse is an art gallery and every art gallery a welcome place to appreciate the artistry of tea. Our guest artists are carefully curated to reflect the space of mindful awareness that we seek in tea ceremony.
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Featured Artist
Emily Palmquist
Born and raised in northern Illinois, Emily’s artistic quest began as early as her love for the woods, nature, and their quiet sense of connection. Thirty-two years later, this cocktail of passions has matured into the backbone of her existence.
From the Midwest to New England where she earned her BFA in painting and found a greater appreciation for the outdoors, to Colorado where these life-long pursuits find a growing sense of harmony and potential, Palmquist continues to practice painting and the art of rural life as her guide from here to there.
The pieces in this collection were composed alongside a series of moves that set me voyaging from west to east and west again. This fluttering about left me and my work double-taking for a sense of place and connection. The results invite viewers to step into a narrative of mixed origins where the familiar commingles with the projected, the past, the day-dreamed, and other deviating realms.
Serving as a rough-draft for introspection and mode for processing these ever-changing environments, this body of work represents my inner experience woven among collected relics of my external voyage. Various patterns and abstracting components offer to embody the connection and correspondence that takes place between the two. While the gathered elements that make their way into a painting are often experienced separately at the onset, my compositions develop through the piecework of discovering how these various parts have the potential for great harmony and/or mystery on canvas. The resulting curations strive to capture a mere visual likeness of what can only be described as a spiritual exploration. As I have since discovered the balm of mindfulness and maintain a practice of meditation, yoga, and therapy, my work today likewise explores and celebrates these themes of healing and personal development.
“Upturn”
Mixed media on panel
Originally inspired by a fallen tree on the valley floor of Telluride, "Upturn" was developed over many years and in numerous locations. From vast acts of paring down to spontaneous subtle additions, this painting has served not only
as a long term travel companion, but a playground for my evolving vision and aesthetic. "Upturn" preserves glimpses of its history, flashing its bare wooden substrate and pencil drawing beyond veils of gradual pattern, paper, gold enamel, glaze, and final red stitch and carving to both sew up its contributing parts and reveal yet again its underlying core. As I have repeatedly uprooted and grasped for my sense of place, I find solace in this entity unearthed, once subterranean, now sunlit, exposed, and transformed into aspiring branches. An initiation, summoned, and called to ascend.
“Easter Theatre”
Oil and gold enamel on canvas (36"x36")
A play between potential and peril, “Easter Theatre” depicts a cautionary thicket of growth and abundance. The foliage erupting from shadow beckons viewers into a deeper drama of innocence dancing with danger, where flower becomes red flag and snake embodies the lurking fears that might accompany such growth. Yet with further inspection, perhaps these precious eggs take on the weight of accumulation, over-invested and clinging, anchored to depths of the past. Suddenly snake becomes a lifeline, a road map from encompassing darkness to the open air and a broader view towards clarity and radical freedom.
“Clearing”
Oil on canvas (39"x54")
A double-take of landscapes I once called home, “Clearing” was an effort to resolve a looming sense of displacement and grief that erupted upon leaving Colorado and settling back east. The effervescent, almost evaporative ponderosas of the west are overlapped by the dense woods of Connecticut. A band of gloss runs through the trees, serving for one stand as a horizon line, and the other a break or clearing in the foliage, sun cast on the forest floor, a beacon of clarity and hope. The potent palette of New England greens is upstaged by a load of reds once airing in the Colorado wind. The fabric both heavy with saturation and weightless to the breeze, becomes a clearing of sorrow and confusion. Nostalgia turned on its ear, when the longing for one place enables an appreciation for another.