The Strange Beauty of Tom Uttech’s Paintings: Now at the Tory Folliard Gallery, they capture a kind of North Woods that doesn’t really exist, though we might wish it did.

By Rose Balistreri - Dec 19th, 2014 for Urban Milwaukee Dial

Art City Asks: Tom Uttech

Tom Uttech hails from Merrill, Wis. (population approximately 9,500), where the Wisconsin River joins with the Prairie River. One suspects that being surrounded from birth by the picturesque cycle of seasons in Merrill has something to do with Uttech’s ascendance to being one of America’s foremost landscape painters and photographers.Uttech, who currently resides in Saukville, Wis., is teaming up with the Tory Folliard Gallery for his ninth solo exhibition in the space. The suite of paintings stem from Uttech’s travels to the Boundary Waters and the Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. As Uttech explains, “These paintings are all recollections of the magic I have found in the North Woods. They never depict any actual place. They hope to recreate the feelings those places generate in ourselves... I do also mean to be saying something about the richness and diversity of life on this planet and how magically wonderful this all is by packing so many individuals and species into the same place at the same time.”

Birds have long been a source of mystery and awe. Today, a growing desire to meaningfully connect with the natural world has fostered a resurgence of popular interest in the winged creatures that surround us daily. The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art examines mankind’s relationship to birds and the natural world through the eyes of twelve major contemporary American artists, including David Beck, Rachel Berwick, Lorna Bieber, Barbara Bosworth, Joann Brennan, Petah Coyne, Walton Ford, Paula McCartney, James Prosek, Laurel Roth Hope, Fred Tomaselli, and Tom Uttech.