Above the Timberline

Norman Rockwell Museum presents an exhibition from author and artist Gregory Manchess.

Now open at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is a new exhibition that highlights artwork from Gregory Manchess’ first fully illustrated novel. Gregory Manchess: Above the Timberline, which opened in November

2018, features 30 paintings, as well as props, archival materials, photographs and behind-thescenes videos exploring the artist’s process. Life-sized sculptures of characters, including polar bears, will also be on display.

“Gregory Manchess has masterfully painted, in bold brushstrokes, a window into a futuristic world,” says curator

Jesse Kowalski. “His engaging tale contains the eternal themes of family, friendship, loss, and love, and his pictures evoke the essence of such adventure illustrators as N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Frank Schoonover.”

The exhibition shares a title with the artist’s new book, Above the Timberline, which follows the grand tradition of classic adventure stories and is set in a futuristic world where it has snowed continuously for 1,500 years. Manchess’ expressive paintings, inspired by the Golden Age of Illustration, bring to life the story of the fictional Wesley Singleton, son of the famed polar explorer Galen Singleton. Wesley searches for his stranded father in a lost city while responding to elements both adversarial and welcoming—and finding his own sense of identity and family along the way.

“I’ve been an artist all of my life, creating visuals for other people’s ideas to make a living as an illustrator,” says Manchess. “In that world I learned to collaborate and work as part of a team to accomplish a visual goal. So when it came to painting my own ideas, I was completely autonomous… Just as we are not raised in a vacuum of ideas, we do not create in a vacuum either. I discovered that in sharing my ideas with friends and colleagues, I was drawn back into the collaborative effort that I’d learned as a professional illustrator.”

The exhibition continues through February 24. For more information visit www.nrm.org.

Gregory Manchess, Above the Timberline, 2017, oil on linen, 15 x 37".Cover illustration for Above the Timberline by Gregory Manchess, Saga Press, 2017. © Gregory Manchess. All rights reserved.

Gregory Manchess, Bears Appear, 2017, oil on linen, 15 x 37". Illustration for Above the Timberline by Gregory Manchess, Saga Press, 2017. © Gregory Manchess. All rights reserved.