VERO BEACH, FLA.- Steve Koman, proprietor of Koman Fine Art in Vero Beach for the past four decades, opened a solo exhibition of the works of Deer Isle, Maine digital montage photographer Jeffery C. Becton, on Tuesday, February 4th. The show will be celebrated with two special events that will benefit the Gifford Youth Achievement Center, including lectures by former Director, Curator, and Museum Educator Chris Crosman at the gallery (2905 Cardinal Drive) on Wednesday, February 5th at 5:30pm; and Saturday, February 8th, at 2:00pm. The Becton show will run through February 15th.

Becton, whose traveling retrospective was featured at the Vero Beach Museum of Art in 2017, is widely regarded as a pioneer in the digital revolution, going back to his time as a student in the Graphic Design master’s program at Yale University in the 1970s. He has made Deer Isle, Maine his permanent year round residence and studio base since 1983.

In addition to his early contributions to photo-based art that earned his montage, Looking West (1994), a place in the Portland Museum of Art’s Biennial and as the frontispiece of Peachpit Press’ important book, Nash Editions’ Photography and the Art of Digital Printing (2007), Becton’s work was eerily prophetic surrounding the effects of climate change, with stunning, often surreal images that juxtapose elements of nature appearing in and encroaching upon the otherwise serene interior living spaces of weather-beaten cottages along the coast of Maine. The arrival of the ocean at the front door contributes to a persistent sense of unease that Becton’s work often evokes. And yet the serenity and beauty feel real as well. In a 2016 review of Becton’s traveling exhibition that debuted at the Bates College Museum of Art, the critic referred to the artist as “arguably the best colorist in any medium in the state of Maine.”

Chris Crosman’s two lectures will focus on the building of the Crystal Bridges Museum Collection, of which he was the founding curator, and the work of Jeffery Becton. Crosman was also former director of the Farnsworth Museum of Art in Rockland, Maine, and he is a member of the board of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

“Becton is a masterful digital photographer whose practice has pioneered and explored new media as central to the art of the 21st century,” said Crosman. “His images are poetic, at once vaguely familiar and hauntingly strange, that collapse the space between inside and outside, time and place, photography and painting.”