NYAB Event - "Honest Anguish" Kyle Nouse

"Honest Anguish" Kyle Nouse

Orchard Windows Gallery

This event has ended.

Honest Anguish” is an exhibition of works centered on the theme of loss, and the ensuing emotions experienced by the artist, Kyle Nouse, following his father’s death in July, 2006. Co- dependents for twenty-six years the death of Nouse’s father triggered an inward collapse of the artist. Now, five years later Nouse has realized the need to confront his father’s absence, and through artistic practice, hopes to regain balance in his life.

Nouse’s father, was born in 1921. Coming of age during the Great Depression his father lived a colorful life replete with stories of Duke Ellington, pickled herring with saltines, stories of being stabbed with an ice pick in the chest and living and eating muskrat in the rough days of the depression. At age 59 he had Nouse, to whom he passed down these stories along with tales of growing up a Detroit city kid, who would later become a newspaperman, editor and artist sailor. Calming down from his turbulent youth, Nouse’s father became a spectacular single parent whose frugal swagger and open mindedness left an indelible mark on his son.

Nouse seeks to honor, mourn and confront his father in life and death through painting human facial expressions. Specifically, Nouse focuses on depicting faces of grief, from a personal perspective. These paintings include physical material relating to his father, from his father’s last sailing magazine to more amorphous plant materials which trigger memories associated with the time the father and son spent together. As such, the exhibition is a mix of loud memorial honoring the jazzy personality Nouse’s dad was, as well as an outlet for the swelling negative emotions his absence triggered—an honest anguish.