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"Celebrating Leaves of Grass"
an exhibition of art works by Lloyd Abernethy
marking the 150th anniversary of Walt Whitman's poems.

Horsham Township Library is pleased to host an exhibit of works by Lloyd Abernethy inspired by the poems in Walt Whitman's famous Leaves of Grass.

About the artist

Lloyd Abernethy is a Professor Emeritus of Arcadia University (formerly Beaver College) where he taught history for 42 years. Although professionally trained as an historian he has maintained an abiding interest in art both as a craft and a field of study throughout his life. One of his most important publications, which combined his professional and art interests, was a biography of a Philadelphia artist, Benton Spruance: The Artist and the Man, published in 1988. Upon his retirement from Arcadia in 1999 he embarked on a second career as a full-time practicing artist. In August 2000, he was juried into the Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists and has exhibited regularly in the Guild's galleries in the Inquirer Building in Conshohocken as well as other spaces. He has experimented with different media, forms, and styles of art: collage, watercolor, and acrylic painting in realistic and abstract styles. He has become primarily an abstract painter in the tradition of Twentiety Century abstract expressionists and their precursors, mainly Hans Hoffman and Vasily Kandinsky. Varied shapes of bold colors in space brought together into a harmonious whole through fluid lines and forms are the primary characteristics of his acrylic paintings.

The present exhibition is made up of abstract and semi-abstract paintings inspired by Walt Whitman's poetry in Leaves of Grass, which was first published in July 1855. Perhaps the most celebrated of American poets, Whitman had an unbridled enthusiasm for life, people, and the American landscape. Of his major themes, "egalitarianism" was the most pervasive. All people - all races, continents, occupations - were tied together and deserving of acceptance and respect ("The Meal Equally Set," "Join'd Unended Links," "The Divine Average"). His love of nature also comes through over and over again; he finds meaning and beauty in everyday scenes and events ("The First Dandelion," "A Patient Spider," "Below the Brine," "Halcyon Days"). In trying to capture the spirit and energy of Whitman's poems, Abernethy has produced interpretations which range from very broad abstractions such as "Orange Buds by Mail" to more realistic works like "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," the title of the well-known elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln.

To contact artist Lloyd Abernethy, you may email: Lloyd Abernethy