Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Austin Furtak-Cole

There are ghosts in Austin Furtak-Cole’s newest paintings. After completing his previous body of work, which focused on the heaviness and mass of the human body, Furtak-Cole shifted gears — he wanted to paint ephemeral experiences. The Burlington-born artist, who works for the Vermont Studio Center, imbues his latest works with something metaphysical — the “edgeless, ephemeral, invisible and ungraspable,” he writes in an artist statement. Spirits are present in his process of layering paint, too: “I think of the obscured layers as ghosts of the final image I’ve painted,” he writes. His show “Fantasms” is at the Gallery at Burlington College through November 27. Pictured: “Becloud.”