While Lynn Boggess’s main residence is in the Potomac Highlands, West Virginia, the artist maintains a studio in the “roughed wilderness” of the West Virginia Highlands. He routinely works from his studio at least one week each month, and admits that it’s easily his favorite place, as the terrain reflects his highly textured subject matter—the landscape.
2 December 2024, oil on canvas, 46 x 40"
In a new solo show of roughly 25 paintings, presented by Principle Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, Boggess’s landscapes straddle the line between peaceful and energetic—even striking. “Boggess uses a cement trowel to carve light and shadow into his canvases, sculpting a world where texture breathes life into the landscape,” says Taylor Chauncey, the gallery's assistant director. “His bold strokes turn paint into frozen air, rushing water, fluffy snow, rugged ground or blossoming foliage. The finished paintings transmit a quiet narrative about the nature surrounding us.”
18 November 2024, oil on canvas, 24 x 20"
The challenge behind what Boggess does with impasto painting, is to allow the paint to have an expressive force that is inherent to thick, fluid oil paint, while insisting it achieve as much realism as possible. “Those two objectives are not, by nature, easily compatible…,” he says. "It’s difficult. Very difficult. And that’s what has sustained my interest in it throughout the decades I have been painting. I can honestly say I have never had a boring session. The unpredictable character of painting wet in wet with thick paint is always fascinating. I can’t imagine any other way.”
For the show titled The Twentieth Year Exhibition—for the number of years Boggess has shown with the gallery—all works are a cross section of the four seasons, beginning with spring of last year. Each of the paintings are also titled as dates, reflecting when they were made, as in the case of 2 December 2024—a snowy, wintery scene involving a body of water.
25 January 2025, oil on canvas, 26 x 22"
“The most important element is space to most painters, I think, and I’m no exception,” shares the artist about the piece. “For me, it’s all about a believable, recessional depth of space. But here’s where it gets interesting—the heavy impasto denies the illusion of depth I work hard to achieve. The eye is presented with a paradox which it searches to reconcile, and therein lies the power of my compositions.”
For other show pieces like 11 November 2024 and 18 November 2024,the background is laid in with a thin layer of paint. The middle ground is the focal point, with a thrust of the heaviest paint tapering off into the foreground. “This approach leads the eye into the scene as if it were a window, until there’s a realization that this is impossible, given the concrete crust of texture on the surface,” he says.
11 November 2024, oil on canvas, 20 x 16"
Why are these works important? “Because it is a summation of what our existence is, philosophically,” he notes. “It acknowledges the two realities we all try to make sense of each day of our lives: the tension between what we see, and what we know and feel.”
The show at Principle Gallery's Alexandria, Virginia, location opens with a reception on April 25 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. —
Principle Gallery 208 King Street • Alexandria, VA 22314 • (703) 739-9326 • www.principlegallery.com
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