Gerald Peters Gallery Contemporary

Evan Feldman
Director
efeldman@gpgallery.com

Opening reception with the artist: Friday, June 16, 5-8PM

Gerald Peters Contemporary is pleased to present Night & Day On Main, an exhibition of new paintings by Tom Birkner. This is his third solo exhibition at the gallery in Santa Fe.
Carefully observed and chromatically inventive, Birkner’s paintings of Main Street America seek to illuminate the direct, personal, common, and unsung. The subjects- a toddler reaching for his teenage mother’s hand, a romping graduation celebration in an abandoned factory, the loneliness of an empty street late at night- are rendered in Birkner’s signature gritty realism. Building his canvases through the application of numerous layers of paint, Birkner aggressively applies and scrapes away paint until the everyday circumstances take on vivid cinematic quality. And although far from Rockwellian, Birkner remains sensitive to idiosyncrasies, depicting places and people who are endearing, mysterious, and wholly themselves.
Birkner received his B.A. from Rutgers University and his M.F.A. from Pennsylvania State University. He is a two-time recipient of the New Jersey State Council on The Arts Fellowship, and his work was recently exhibited at the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas and Centro Cultural de las Fronteras, Juárez, Mexico. He has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally and has earned reviews in the New York Times and ARTnews.


							

									Tom Birkner									Lone Star 2022									oil on canvas stretched over board<br />
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

Tom Birkner

Lone Star 2022
oil on canvas stretched over board
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Mobile Home 2022									oil on canvas stretched over board<br />
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

Tom Birkner

Mobile Home 2022
oil on canvas stretched over board
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Living Room Set 2022									oil on canvas stretched over board<br />
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

Tom Birkner

Living Room Set 2022
oil on canvas stretched over board
30 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches

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									Tom Birkner									The Swing 2023									oil on canvas stretched over board<br />
72 x 108 inches

Tom Birkner

The Swing 2023
oil on canvas stretched over board
72 x 108 inches

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First and foremost, Main Street is not Wall Street. Nor is it corporate or cosmopolitan. It isn't
online, thriving, successful and glamorous. It isn't "the future". And in Birkner's paintings this is
a good thing. It's the opposition to the predictability and conformity of mainstream American
life that makes Main Street so worthwhile.


							

									Tom Birkner									Mother & Child 2023									oil on canvas stretched over board<br />
30 x 80 inches

Tom Birkner

Mother & Child 2023
oil on canvas stretched over board
30 x 80 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Chess on Main 2019									oil on canvas<br />
42 x 78 inches

Tom Birkner

Chess on Main 2019
oil on canvas
42 x 78 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Break N' Run 2019									oil on canvas<br />
14 x 48 inches

Tom Birkner

Break N' Run 2019
oil on canvas
14 x 48 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Some Men in Mississippi 2017									oil on canvas<br />
36 x 80 inches

Tom Birkner

Some Men in Mississippi 2017
oil on canvas
36 x 80 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Lula 2012									oil on canvas<br />
14 x 48 inches

Tom Birkner

Lula 2012
oil on canvas
14 x 48 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Past, Present, Future Marks, Mississippi 2014									oil on canvas<br />
8 x 48 inches

Tom Birkner

Past, Present, Future Marks, Mississippi 2014
oil on canvas
8 x 48 inches

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																		Approaching Darkness, Joshua Tree, CA 2019									oil on canvas<br />
32 x 80 inches

Approaching Darkness, Joshua Tree, CA 2019
oil on canvas
32 x 80 inches

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									Tom Birkner									Reno Intersection 2014									oil on canvas<br />
8 x 48 inches

Tom Birkner

Reno Intersection 2014
oil on canvas
8 x 48 inches

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