Aaron Drew

Aaron Drew poses in front of his exhibit of prints at Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth.
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Aaron Drew was fed up.It was ‘96.The Dover native had spent 11 years working local restaurants and playing drums with indy/college bands.He'd started to feel he was going nowhere, and didn't know where he'd head if he could.Maybe a career as a chemist?
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Drew had found printmaking; maybe not the answer to the financial issues, but certainly one that addressed direction and passion.

Drew gives a lion's share of credit to instructors John Jacobsmeyer and Jennifer Moses for the switch.
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"Tormented by Blue," a 48" x 48" woodcut reduction by Aaron Drew is one of several prints by the artist on view at Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth through April 10. Courtesy photo

"And I changed my mind," says Drew, now 36."I really hadn't thought about it up to that point, as far as art being my final choice, my career move."

Today, commuting from his Barrington home, he still puts in a few weekend hours at the Stockpot restaurant, a place he'd worked during his high school and UNH years.He's also back at the university, where he'd received his BFA in fine art and printmaking before heading off for a MFA in printmaking at Indiana University.Today he's teaching a course in advanced color printmaking for a professor on sabbatical.He's also an instructor at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, the job that drew him back to the area after graduating last May.At NHIA he teaches two courses, and is helping build a new printmaking department.

All this means Drew is able to pay his own way, in good part with his art.It's the reason to teach.And while the occupation takes a lot of time, he still carves out a day or two a week to do his own work, though "it's been, a little tight lately."

Drew's work is on exhibit at Three Graces in Portsmouth, in "Apathy and Entropy," which will hang through April 10.The works range in size from 6 by 6 inches, to 7 by 12 feet.What they all have in common is a bold, sweeping line and the subject of clouds.Drew says the work is metaphor for his contemplation and dealings of life, "a broad spectrum of things, personal and global and other situations.I think that this imagery is - my intent is - it's more thought-provoking and a bit existential."

While he does do figurative work, and has a strong interest in art books, clouds are the current theme; his form of contemplation.

"My initial attraction to clouds is visceral and therefore physical and psychological," he says in his artist statement.They are non-location specific visuals, he says, "anywhere on the planet, (clouds) should be able to move you from actual space."

His larger work, more than the small images, are further effort to take the viewer outside themselves.The scale "has the ability to transcend place and time."

He was influenced by the massive works seen in museums, such as that of Titian.