This will be the third time BigTown has showed Peter Fried’s work. To this point Fried’s exhibited work has come from a collection of what he calls his “Infrastructure Paintings” — landscapes of gas stations, roadways, bridges, and other working environments — but Figure in the Landscape, featured in BigTown’s Center gallery, takes the genre of landscape into new territory. The exhibition will feature a series of recent work, paintings of bathers at swimming holes in and around Vermont, and showcases Fried’s adeptness in depicting scenes of life in nature with ingenuity and ease. 

Fried was born in Prague and educated in Scotland at St. Martin’s, and The Slade School of Fine Art in London, before moving to Vermont where he has resided since 1995. Throughout his body of work runs a theme of immersion in nature and a connection to his surroundings. On the experiential quality of painting, Fried writes: “I may enter a state of communion with what I perceive. There appears a seamless continuum between feeling and felt object. I enjoy this state of being.” His latest work reflects this distinct sense of communion and emotion in every piece.