June 29, 2026

Gary Komarin’s “The Vessel” begins with a childhood memory. Growing up in Manhattan, Komarin came of age surrounded by the collections of the city’s great museums, where he encountered vessel forms from ancient Greece and Rome, Mayan and Aztec cultures, Africa, and New Guinea. An early encounter with Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings left a lasting impression, though not for the reasons one might expect. It was not the flowers themselves that stayed with him but the simple, curved pot that held them; unadorned and quiet, bearing the visual weight of all that abundance above.

The vessels that appear throughout Komarin’s work are inventions of the subconscious, manifestations of a personal visual language that surfaces across his broader oeuvre in cups, bowls, spittoons, tagines, and containers of every conceivable shape and size. When translated to large stretched canvas, these forms take on a new kind of freedom, floating in ethereal space or hovering in some imagined undersea depth. Across media, the motifs shift from isolated figures to crowded compositions where new interactions and eccentricities emerge.

His “Amphora” series traces one of civilization’s most enduring forms back to the Neolithic era. In Komarin’s hands, the traditional vessel multiplies and transforms, its looping handles reflecting layers of culture, anthropomorphism, and personal history. The work moves between subdued seriousness and cartoonish iconography, using the simple premise of a closed container to explore color, figure, mood, and meaning. “Amphora” is on view from July 3 through July 26, opening reception July 11, 3–5 pm. 

Judy Black Memorial Park, 1 Green Hill Rd., Washington Depot.  judyblackpark.org