New exhibition at Norton House shines light on natural treasure of Hypoluxo Scrub

Paul Gervais was on a Brightline train north from Art Basel in Miami when he spotted it: An unspoiled patch of paradise north of Boynton Beach.

The beautiful spot Gervais saw on the west side of the train tracks that day in December 2021 is the Hypoluxo Scrub, a pristine, 98-acre natural area owned by Palm Beach County and stretching south from Hypoluxo Road along Federal Highway.

“It just looked like no one had ever been there before, you know?” he said, smiling. “I went there the very next day and I just thought it was amazing.”

So amazing, in fact, that inspiration struck — in the form of a series of paintings that are on display now through Jan. 7 in the Norton House at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens in West Palm Beach.

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“An Endangered Landscape: Recent Paintings of the Hypoluxo Scrub” is Gervais’ first exhibition of landscape paintings, his first collection of landscape paintings — and some of his first landscape paintings, period.

The artist and author — his novel “Extraordinary People” was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction — has spent most of his career in the abstract.

Discovering Hypoluxo Scrub and its near-pristine appearance was “totally by accident,” Gervais said. It sits on the west side of the Atlantic Coastal Ridge, and the natural area has two walking trails, a 2-acre restored wetland and an observation tower.

But landscape painting called to him first in England, the part-time home he shares with his husband, Gil Cohen. They also have a home in Palm Beach after spending 35 years in Italy's Tuscany region.

“I’m a non-representational artist,” he said. “My art has always been abstraction, minimalist. I’d never painted a landscape prior to two years ago.”

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But he always loved landscape painting, and portraits. In 2021, he displayed a collection of his portraits alongside some of his more abstract work at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

“I give myself new challenges,” Gervais said, pointing to a handful of smaller Hypoluxo Scrub landscapes that he painted onto wood instead of linen.

“It’s very challenging,” he said of the medium, noting the smooth surface. “It’s less forgiving. Whereas with linen, there’s the weave that can kind of correct your lack of precision, on a surface like this, there is no weave. You have to get it right.”

He made several visits to the natural area, shooting hundreds of photos with his iPhone. He took those images back to his home studio, where he began to transfer them to canvas and wood with his brushes.

In exploring Hypoluxo Scrub, he looked for picturesque scenes, taking those photos wherever he found them.

“With all that sand and the reflection that you get, and the shadows that are often blue on the sand, you kind of can’t go wrong,” Gervais said. “And I didn’t didn’t want them to be postcard images ...

“I like a bit of some vaguely disturbing images that are a little bit brutal. Because it is a little bit brutal,” he said. “Finding the beauty in the brutality, I think that’s probably what I was looking to do.”

He explores natural light in the paintings: Where he saw potential to draw more darkness from the shadows, he did so — further highlighting the places the sun touched and only adding to the striking nature of some of the scenes.

Gervais focused each painting on the natural world, being careful to remove any suggestion of human presence. There were some tracks from a vehicle used by preserve staff, which he did not include, he said. Where there might have been footprints from other visitors, Gervais also did not include them. He did, however, include animal tracks.

“These are landscapes that are original and natural and more or less untouched,” he said. “It’s impossible that they could survive intact from centuries ago. I really like them without people, without human activity, just focusing on the natural fuel of it. That’s something that’s so rare to find in Florida now.”

There was not much wildlife at the scrub when he visited, but he did see many tortoises, which he heard “barking,” he said.

He marveled that there are still places in Florida such as the Hypoluxo Scrub, and said he is grateful for the people who had the foresight to protect the land.

“They chose to preserve it, this seemingly ugly thing,” Gervais said, “so that we can all have a better take on where we live and this planet. I think we should be very grateful for that.”

Gervais said he grew "more and more empathetic to the plight of these special, fragile, fraction-size bits of landscape that are preserved.”

Some of the sandy scenes reminded him of snow on the ground in New England, where he grew up just north of Boston.

He plans to continue exploring landscape painting, in addition to other formats.

“I would be very bored if I had to do one thing all my life,” Gervais said, smiling. He referenced the artists of the 1960s, when people felt that those who created art should just do one thing, be associated with a particular kind of look.

“You know, if you’re [painter Mark] Rothko, you have to make painting that look like that, so they’re recognizably Rothko,” Gervais said. “I would never want to be just stuck on one thing forever. I’d be totally bored by that.”

Showing his work in the Norton House made sense, he said, because of the domestic setting. Walking into the Norton House — particularly since it underwent a major renovation before last season — feels like walking into a friend’s house to view their art collection.

“These are domestic-sized paintings,” Gervais said. “It’s the fashion right now to make enormous paintings and the galleries are bigger and bigger. I can’t help but ask myself, who’s gonna buy those paintings? Where are they gonna put them? So I take a stand on domestic-sized art, such as these.

“These could fit in anybody’s living room, you know?” he said.

That domestic feeling extends into the works themselves, with Gervais suggesting that in one painting, he could imagine building his house just beyond a sand dune.

“I hope people see the beauty in the natural landscape,” he said. “That it isn’t only the enormously manicured look of things, with introduced plants and vegetation that aren’t right for here.

“It’s very moving to go into a place like that, isn’t it?” Gervais said. “Stand there for a moment and just listen to it and look.”

Gervais’ exhibition kicks off another season of the arts at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens.

This year’s schedule also includes:

Master Gardener in Residence Tour and Talk, at 11 a.m. the second Friday of each month through June

Seventh annual Sculpture in Motion, begins at 10 a.m. Nov. 18

Conservation Conversations Speaker Series, at 6 p.m. Nov. 2, Jan. 4, Feb. 1, March 7 and April 4

“The Divine Feminine: Contemporary Women Sculptors,” Dec. 1 through June 30

Holiday Shopping and Tea in the Gardens with Iris Apfel, 2 to 4 p.m. Dec. 2

For a full schedule and more details, go to www.ansg.org

If you go:

What: Paul Gervais, “An Endangered Landscape: Recent Paintings of the Hypoluxo Scrub”

Where: Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, 253 Barcelona Road, West Palm Beach

When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday through Jan. 7

Cost: Free for members, $15 for non-member adults, $10 for seniors age 65 and older, $7 for students and free for ages 5 and younger

Information: Call 561-832-5328 or go to www.ansg.org

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: New exhibition at Norton House features scenes from Hypoluxo Scrub