Bay Area artist Dana Hart-Stone opens an exhibition, History Paintings, at Brian Gross Fine Art at One Post Street on January 6, 2009. On view will be four large works with imagery made from found historic photographic images that are repeated in grid formations to create subtle, rhythmic patterns. These works resonate with the presence of a time and place long past. The exhibition will continue through March 27, 2009.

Hart-Stone finds inspiration through vintage, vernacular photographs that he views as "anonymous artifacts" of place. Feeling a connection to the romantic quality of these old photos, he constructs meaning through re-contextualizing and repeating the imagery. The subject matter Hart-Stone addresses includes issues of home, family, war, death and renewal.

Hart-Stone creates his compositions through a Polaroid transfer directly onto raw canvas. The paintings are comprised of hundreds of images projected onto Polaroid film. The photographic emulsion is then pressed into the canvas allowing the image to finish developing into the fibers of the canvas material. Hart-Stone's process involves hundreds of transfers per painting following unique rhythms and creating rich tapestries of image, pattern and remembrance.

Born in Billings, Montana, Dana Hart-Stone attended Montana State University and received his B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1997. He currently lives and works in Monterey, California.