Paul Wainwright’s photographs interprets images of landscapes and historic architecture. Colonial meetinghouses, circa 1700s, were the center of both religious and civic life. Many were built with tax money, and their simple, undecorated architecture reflected the desire of early Puritan settlers to live simple lives apart from the Church of England. Yet these were their “cathedrals,” built by hand without adornment. Only a few of them remain in a relatively unchanged state. These structures not only present a fascinating glimpse into our nation’s colonial history, but are beautiful as well.
Wainwright’s series, A Space for Faith: The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, is featured in the Griffin Satellite Gallery at Digital Silver Imaging July 26th through September 30th, 2016. An opening reception will take place on September 14, 2016 from 68pm. The reception is free and open to the public.
“I approach meetinghouses in much the same way an artist who works with the human form approaches a model,” Wainwright says. “It is not important what the person’s name is. Rather, the artist sees in the model a quality that can, when properly posed and lit, yield a piece of art. These meetinghouses are my “models” for making art, and my photographs reflect my emotional response to them–my physical location when I made each photograph is not of primary importance.”
Wainwright is a fine art, large format black & white photographer who lives and works in Atkinson, New Hampshire. He specializes in traditional, wet process photography. Even though, Wainwright earned his PhD in physics from Yale University, he is now dedicated to photography fulltime. Wainwright has shown his work in numerous solo and juried shows, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Panopticon Gallery in Boston. His work is in collections of private and corporate collectors including Peabody Essex Museum, Boston Public Library, and Fidelity Investments.
