Tyler Arment: Illusions of Light: A Collaboration Between the Newport Art Museum and Belmont Chapel

The Newport Art Museum, in partnership with Belmont Chapel, is pleased to present Illusions of Light Series, a new exhibition by Newport-based artist Tyler Arment. Installed within the chapel’s contemplative setting, the exhibition brings together a body of abstract paintings that explore the transformative qualities of light, perception, and human experience. The presentation invites visitors into a space where art, architecture, and quiet contemplation intersect.

About the Illusions of Light Series

In this series, light becomes more than a visual phenomenon—it serves as a vehicle for presence, transformation, and connection. Through layered color, textured surfaces, and atmospheric compositions, Arment creates paintings that feel both expansive and intimate. Drawing upon symbolic forms and archetypal imagery, the works engage themes of harmony, gratitude, intuition, forgiveness, and awakening.

Installed within Belmont Chapel, these luminous abstractions take on an added resonance, encouraging visitors to slow down, look closely, and consider the relationship between the visible world and the inner landscapes of memory, emotion, and spirit.

Tyler Arment: Artist Statement

The influences present in my work originate from a deep sense of place and time. Having grown up in historic Newport, Rhode Island, I remain connected to the culture of New England and its inherent beauty—where the ocean meets the sky and maritime traditions are woven into everyday life. The narratives that emerge on my canvases have been shaped by an eclectic and fiercely independent mother, a grandmother with a love of fashion, and a grandfather who cherished the bygone eras of classic musicals and black-and-white films.

We are all an accumulation of our experiences. The people, places, and moments that form the fabric of our lives leave lasting impressions upon our memory, resurfacing as fleeting images in the mind’s eye, like frames from a flickering film reel. My interest in art stems from these impressions. Through painting, I seek to reflect and reinterpret the images that have lingered most deeply in my consciousness, transforming memory, emotion, and experience into visual form.