The color engages you first. From the moment you ascend to the second-floor Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, a party-hued exhibition pulls you in. Titled "The Spontaneous Garden," Eric Hibit's collection of paintings sparks joy. Even more so when you notice the bumps: hundreds of tiny dots of acrylic paint that give his surfaces, and his subjects, unusual dimensionality. (Note: Photographs don't do this work justice.)
Hibit freckles his subjects — primarily drawn from the natural world — with paint in the same or a contrasting color. In some places he adds slightly larger dots that look like wee canapés: round wafers stacked with one or two smaller rounds in different colors. Hexum Gallery owner John Zaso explained that Hibit dries little blobs of acrylic on baking sheets, then glues them to his canvases. It's a carefully controlled process that paradoxically gives his paintings a vibratory energy.
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