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     The Gorski Retrospective at the Chaffee Center in Rutland Vermont through October 12, 2009
VPR Article , 7 Days Article , Manchester Journal Article

The Gorski Retrospective highlights the conflict resolution process binding an artist's canvasses of a lifetime into a formal and meaningful progression, as diversity into a dialectic continuity. It validates the conflict resolution process, which provides greater insights into an artist's works.
The links on the left each connect you to a unique phase of Henry Gorski's work.

The Museum of the Creative Process

     The predominant themes in the artist's preoccupations are with the helplessness of man. Adam first is seen as dehumanized, a victim in a personal struggle with the mistrusted political war machine. Resolving his anger at the Vietnam War, the artist becomes preoccupied with love in the era of the post-war intellectual and societal liberation. The free search for love generates a sense of danger to a married, devout, Catholic man. Temptation and guilt were reflected in his preoccupation with the Crucifix. The artist moved from the theme of the individual sacrifice out of guilt to a new phase of oppression related to losing one's identity playing team sports.

     In the final phase of his work, the artist returns to the predicament of his son, who has been diagnosed as mentally retarded. But now, the matured son is no longer a victim, but a winner. In the sequence of the Aberrations of the Creator, Gorski presented studies of men facing the same challenges presented to his son as empowered, sensitive, profound and very respectable individuals.

      One could say that the artist resolved the conflicts in the Birth and Death of Adam as a submissive person who first felt oppressed and angry, who then became loving, trusting, vulnerable, guilty and self-sacrificial; he who wished to be assertive and bold as an athlete seeking to question the nature of reality. Finally he found himself becoming a self-respecting man reconciled with the creator, despite the challenges that he faced in his life. The saga of Adam is of a proud man whose identity evolved from a chill of darkness to that of the crucifix, to that of Manual with Bird, evolved to feel humble and sensitive, yet empowered and dignified, respectful of the Creator in spite of his mistakes.