Current Exhibition:
Were I A Bird: Tree Studies
Photographs By Paula Willmot Kraus
March 1 - 30
Opening Reception: Friday, March 1, 6 - 9 p.m.
Open Third Sunday, March 17, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Email tlongleycook@gmail.com with questions or to view by appointment
Read additional information about this exhibition below
Dutoit Gallery is pleased to host Were I a Bird: Tree Studies; Photographs by Paula Willmot Kraus. This exhibition is a tribute project in honor of the late Paula Willmot Kraus in cooperation with her husband, Fred Kraus. It is led by Dutoit Gallery member Tracy Longley-Cook with the help of several others. Paula was a dear friend to many as well as a tremendous talent.
This exhibit features the photographic work of Paula Willmot Kraus, who planned this exhibit and took the photographs, though she passed away before she was able to print her work in the darkroom. Friends and fellow artists – led by Tracy Longley-Cook and Ben Montague, both of Wright State University, and Andrew Dailey of Rosewood Arts Centre – continued the process, using Paula’s contact sheets as a printing guide, and interpreted her notes on presenting these images as they believed she would have wished.
Paula loved hiking, being immersed in the woods, surrounded by trees and all manner of plants and wildlife – most especially birds, birds of all kinds. The natural world literally pulsed for her, and Paula’s life reflected the energy in our world. Sunlight and shadows, light and dark, yin and yang – there was a rhythm, an Earthbeat to which Paula felt intrinsically connected.
Paula often related photography’s “drawing with light” to a painter’s process of mixing paint to create the initial palette of raw material. Light served as her raw material. Paula noted that Claude Monet said that “one instant, one aspect of nature, contains it all,” to which she responded, “I believe the garden -- with its rhythms, its seasons, its beauty, and its deaths – reflect that ‘all’.” Paula was fascinated by the idea that trees could communicate to each other. In these images, we believe they are speaking to her.
Paula initially told the stories of others as a photojournalist, then began to share her own visual narratives, and widely exhibited her work for four decades. Paula’s work focuses on subjects that are drawn from her immediate surroundings. While her focus and materials changed to reflect the story she seeks to tell, the images unfold from very personal beginnings. She often uses nature and natural forms to explore memory, emotions and formal aesthetics.
As both an artist and educator, Paula communicated a world of wonder – the beauty of the ordinary, the magic of a moment, life’s interconnections. It has been said that her work reveals the extraordinary that existed in the apparent ordinary.
Paula most recently served as Gallery Coordinator for Rosewood Arts Centre. She has taught at Stivers School for the Arts, Wright State University, and The Ohio Institute of Photography and Technology.
Paula earned an MA in Photography and a BS in Science. For her senior year of high school, she was awarded a scholarship to spend eight months aboard a 300-foot sailboat in the Caribbean, featuring a full faculty and numerous field trips.
Her work has been shown in galleries and museums nationally as well as in private collections, and she has been the recipient of numerous grants, awards and fellowships.