AIDEN LASSELL RIPLEY (1896 - 1969): A Retrospective
Curated by Elizabeth Ives Hunter, CCMA Exec Director
August 2 – October 5, 2008
GALLERY TALKS with Elizabeth Ives Hunter:
Artful Thursday, August 14, 2:30 pm.

Tuesday, September 9, 2:30 pm

Sunday, October 5, 3 pm

    Aiden Lassell Ripley was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts and spent much of his life in the Boston area, often traveling to Cape Cod.  The son of a musician, Ripley developed his talent as a tuba player and considered a career as a musician, but he soon discovered that painting was his true passion. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and received the Page Traveling Scholarship which allowed him to travel and paint in Europe from 1923 to 1925. 

    During the 1940s and 50s, Ripley became known as one of America’s pre-eminent painters of sporting scenes – hunters and game, fly-fishing on pristine rivers, and plantation life -- but his work extends well beyond this subject matter.  The CCMA exhibition will focus on the totality of his work – portraits, still lifes, non-sporting landscapes and allegories.  Ripley’s ability to maintain excellence of design and convincing emphasis and subordination marks his work as truly outstanding.

   According to CCMA Executive Director Elizabeth Ives Hunter, curator of the exhibition, “The full breadth of Ripley’s work is examined in the book THE ART OF AIDEN LASSELL RIPLEY by Julie Carlson Wildfeuer and Stephen B. O’Brien, Jr., published in conjunction with the show. Taken together, the exhibition and the book will facilitate a re-evaluation of Ripley’s reputation as an artist.”

    Ripley studied art at the Fenway School of Illustration and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Philip Hale and Frank W. Benson.  He was elected to the Guild of Boston Artists in 1925, an honor that signaled acceptance by the most important painters of the day.  He served as president of the Guild from 1959 until his death in 1969.  Ripley received fifty prizes during his lifetime. 

    This exhibition is made possible in part by The Ellen and Richard Cuda Family Foundation of the Cape Cod Foundation. 
    An essay on Aiden Lassell Ripley (1896 – 1969):  A Retrospective by Elizabeth Ives Hunter which appeared in American Art Review Magazine is available on request.

ELIZABETH PRATT: Approaches to Watercolor
July 12 - September 7
Slide Talk: Thursday, July 31, 11 am
Gallery Talk & Slide Show: Sunday, August 10, 2 pm
    This nationally known and exhibited artist follows her imagination and explores the range of textures and unique characteristics of the medium. Pratt believes, "It's a game of spontaneous decisions. The paint always wins and I am glad to be on its team."
Image: "Marsh Dwellers"

ELISABETH PEARL: Sideshow by the Sea
July 12 - August 24
    Most artists try to simplify. I'm just the opposite. I want everything in there, every door knob.   - Elisabeth Pearl
    Elisabeth Pearl’s paintings tell a story of the life of the streets of Provincetown today. With vibrant color and kinetic energy, they capture the lively individuality and excitement of the town. 

Some would say that dogs are her main subject and the street denizens they belong to are just there as their friends.  Others would say that the unique restaurants, businesses and the clientele they cater to are the real subjects. 

    Pearl’s paintings are so filled with details it takes many viewings to discern the commentary on everyday life she has captured.  The artist says that her work is all about the details – “shapes and colors, and playing with the edges of forms…and making them flow.” This exhibition presents her view of life on the streets of Provincetown in ten oil paintings created since 2004.

    Elisabeth Pearl was born and raised in Coney Island, a seaside community in Brooklyn, New York. She learned to be a ‘street painter’ when she studied at the Brooklyn Museum School with Isaac Soyer, a painter of realist social commentary.  He was the brother of Raphael Soyer, an artist of ‘Ashcan School’ realist street scenes who also spent time in Provincetown.  

    Pearl received her BA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She received a Massachusetts Arts Lottery Council Grant and has exhibited at The Art Complex Museum, The Boston Athenaeum, The Copley Society, The Cambridge Art Association, as well as many gallery shows.
Image: "4th of July"

 

 

SKIP TREGLIA’S FOUND OBJECTS: SPIRITS OF LAND AND SEA

July 26 – September 28, 2008

Gallery Talk:  Thursday, August 7, 6 pm 
    My work is a form of artistic recycling in which I’m connecting my sense of design with nature’s.      -Skip Treglia

    Skip Treglia creates whimsical figures from objects found in nature which emphasizes his strong belief in our connectedness to nature. This exhibition presents his very large sculptural assemblages of fish and shamans. 

    Born in Boston in 1946, the artist grew up in a large family of Italian and British immigrants in Watertown, MA. As a child he would bicycle to his favorite fishing holes, bringing both a fishing rod and a sketchbook.

    Today he searches for found objects with unique character, such as aged, weathered, bleached, or twisted drifts of wood or metal polished by the elements. Some of his findings have spent a great deal of time in the ocean and so it seems to him natural to incorporate them and his love of fishing into his unusual fish figures.

    His whimsical shaman figures are influenced by his interest in Native American and Mayan Art and by his travels and workshops in Mexico and Guatemala.

    As part of this exhibition, Treglia is asking visitors to suggest a name for one of his unnamed shamans. A shaman is the spiritual leader of a tribe who offers guidance and healing through communication with animals and spirits of the earth. This particular shaman depicts birds on his outstretched arms made of driftwood. Treglia will announce the title he chooses the week of September 15th.         

    Treglia attended the New England School of Art and was awarded the Gold Medal in Illustration from the Copley Society of Boston in 1968. In addition to creating assemblages from natural materials, he has been a recognized abstract painter for over thirty years. He also founded Aurora Enterprises, a landscape design service. His works are widely exhibited and collected throughout New England.
Image: Unnamed Shaman

 

 

GLIMPSES OF A PROVINCETOWN COLLECTION
June 2007 – June 2008
    There is something very special about a private collection because it represents the best of a chosen genre that one person can assemble within the matrix of time, taste, and budget. This collection, assembled over a period of at least ten years, reflects discerning taste and an interest in both characteristic work and experimentation by Provincetown artists. The individual works come together to create an intellectually satisfying counterpoint – much as the town itself has provided a sympathetic environment to diverse artists and schools of esthetic practice. The Cape Cod Museum of Art is fortunate to be able to borrow and exhibit this work.
       - Elizabeth Ives Hunter, Executive Director

Image: "Untitled" by Robert Motherwell
A catalogue of this exhibition is for sale in the Museum Shop.

 

 

FORMER EXHIBITIONS

SAM FEINSTEIN (1915 - 2003): A Retrospective
May 31 - July 27
Curated by Patricia Stark Feinstein
    This exhibition will reveal the seventy-year trajectory of Sam Feinstein’s development from realism through expressionism, cubist expressionism, Hofmann-influenced abstraction to Feinstein’s own unique language of color—vibrating and luminous — in his monumental, mature abstract paintings.
    Born in Russia and raised in Philadelphia, Feinstein taught and supervised classes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and filmed the museum’s first art documentary. He later moved to New York and studied with Hans Hofmann, whom he filmed in 1950 to create his documentary, Hans Hofmann.  Feinstein taught at Pratt Institute, wrote for Art Digest magazine and exhibited his paintings in New York, Philadelphia and Provincetown until he withdrew from the exhibition world in 1960 to dedicate himself to refining his principles and teaching for the remainder of his life. Feinstein spent his summers on Cape Cod, during the 1950s in Provincetown, and in 1960 moved to Whig Street in Dennis where he painted and taught for the next 42 years.
    Curator Patricia Stark Feinstein, a painter, teacher, curator, lecturer and former faculty member at Riverdale Country School in New York City, will expand upon the art and philosophy of her husband in related events during the show. She studied with Sam Feinstein and taught with him for eighteen years. She has written a book on her husband’s work that will be released by the award-winning Fields Publishing in conjunction with this exhibition.

To view a video of Pat discussing the exhibition, click on box below:

 

FOUR PAINTERS: On Common Ground
June 7 - August 10
Curated by Paul Resika
Gallery Talk: Donald Beal on Thursday, July 17, 11 am
    To make something New, without tricks, requires talent, perseverance and a dedicated life. It also takes passion. I have known the work of Beal, DuToit, Paulson and Radell for 30 years.  I believe they have these qualities.      Paul Resika
    Donald Beal, Robert DuToit, David Paulson and Thaddeus Radell have a 30 year history of friendship – at one time or another schooling together, living together, and studying with  Paul Resika at Parsons School of Design in New York. 
    Like Resika they all have a deep respect for the modernist principles of his teacher Hans Hofmann. They went their different ways: Beal and DuToit to the Outer Cape, Radell to France and New York, and Paulson to upstate New York, but they share an ongoing dialogue that continues to shape their work and lives. As Beal describes it, “Our work differs as our natures differ, but there is a like spirit and feeling that runs through all the work and unites us.”  
    Donald Beal was born in Syracuse, New York and lived in Westford Massachusetts until graduating high school in 1977.  He studied art at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he earned his BFA in painting in 1981. After moving to New York City to study at Brooklyn College, he went on to receive his MFA from Parsons School of Design.  Provincetown, Massachusetts has been his home since 1985, where he is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery. Beal has been a professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth since 1999.
    Robert DuToit of North Truro was born in Boston in 1956 and began painting at the age of 10. He received a BFA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York City and has studied for extended periods in France and Italy. An active Cape artist since the 1980s, he has been involved in numerous solo and group shows in Boston, New York and the Outer Cape, most recently at Maurice Arlos Fine Art Gallery in New York and the DNA Gallery in Provincetown. His recent work consists of elemental landscapes of various motifs as well as small direct figure compositions.
    David Paulson was born in Providence, R.I. in 1955. At 17 he began drawing with charcoal and watercolor.  He attended Swain School Design in New Bedford and studied printing and drawing with David Loeffler Smith. In 1978 he attended Parsons School of Design MFA program, where he studied with Paul Resika. He took sculpture classes with Peter Agostini in 1980 at New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture, where he also taught. He lived in Brooklyn until 1994 and spent some winters in Provincetown.  He currently lives in Ghent, New York.           
    Thaddeus Radell was born in 1956 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the son of artists. In 1978, he received his BFA at Mercy College of the University of Detroit and his Master of Fine Art at Parsons School of Design in 1982.  After graduating, he moved to France where for 14 years he divided his time between Paris and the South. He is currently living and working in New York City.  He has had numerous solo shows in France and at the Marurice Arlos Fine Art Gallery in New York City. 
    Curator:  Paul Resika      
    Born in New York City, Paul Resika studied with Hans Hofmann in New York and later in Provincetown. His work merges the emotions of abstract expressionism with his representational subjects, often of nature. He has received numerous awards and his work is included in many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of American Art.   Resika currently divides his time between New York and Provincetown.
Image: "Sunflower," pastel painting by Robert DuToit