Veils of Light: Between Stillness and Illusion | Robert Bibler & John Van Dreal

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artwork ©Robert Bibler and John Van Dreal, respectively

Veils of Light: Between Stillness and Illusion | Robert Bibler & John Van Dreal at Stefani Art Gallery June 6 to July 31.

Opening Reception

Date: Friday, June 6

Time: 5 to 8 p.m.

Location: Stefani Art Gallery, 305 Court ST NE, Salem, Oregon 97301

Exhibition dates: June 6 to July 31

In Veils of Light: Between Stillness and Illusion, Robert Bibler's and John Van Dreal's works converge in a contemplative encounter—an exhibition where visual language is pared down to its most essential and presence is shaped through restraint, tone, and light.

Robert Bibler’s drawings are meditations in conte and graphite: intimate, precise, and quietly charged. His subjects, often singular and enigmatic, appear in states of inwardness and stillness, rendered with a refined sensibility that blurs the line between observation and interior vision. Each drawing becomes a kind of illusion, not simply in the pictorial sense, but in the psychological one. There is always more behind the surface: a pause, a question, an emotion unspoken. These are not just images to see; they are moments to enter.

In counterpoint, John Van Dreal’s landscapes unfold in tonal washes and luminous atmospheres. His painterly approach evokes expanses of land, sky, and water as if glimpsed through memory or dream. In his work, light is less a source than a presence—diffused, shifting, and ethereal. The landscapes carry a palpable sense of motion beneath the surface, as if nature were pausing to breathe. Stillness in Van Dreal’s work is not empty, but full of time, mood, and latent energy.

These two artists offer more than a visual experience—they offer a shared sensibility rooted in nuance, silence, and the in-between. Veils of Light refers to the subtle luminosity each artist achieves and the delicate threshold they explore: between the seen and the felt, between the material world and the realm of quiet evocation. In this space, light becomes language, and illusion becomes the vessel for something deeply real.

Please note that this exhibition contains classical nudity.