All lectures are at 11am in Viewing Room 1 in the basement of White Hall on the Mid-Town Campus.  All lectures are open to the public as seating allows.

Shelia Geoffrion  

Tuesday, September 19

In 1983 Sheila Geoffrion received an M.F.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and married Neil Welliver, then head of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, considered by many to be the finest landscape painter of his generation. In the twenty years of their association, she painted in an atmosphere of intellectual and artistic ferment in a household that was constantly full of leading artists, poets and philosophers. Out of this background, Geoffrion forged an intensely personal body of work – intimate studies of natural forms painted with a ferocious and discerning tenderness. These pictures combine the austere abstract discipline of Mondrian with the lush paint handling of Titian.

Writing in the Maine Times, Edgar Allen Beem comments: “In his call for raising American consciousness about the value of nature in everyday life, John Fowles chastised conservationists for thinking ‘in terms of special reservations and salvation showpieces, and not enough in terms of a general re-integration of common nature in ordinary life.’ ‘What I believe is required,’ wrote Fowles,  ‘is very simple to say: a will to foster the wildlife, however insignificant and humble, in the citizen’s own backyard and neighborhood – and not to foster the illusion that nature is some large and spectacular rare bird or beast seen on a TV film of glimpsed in a remote natural park during a summer vacation.’ And that is what Geoffrion’s nature paintings accomplish. By the power of her attention and art, she lifts the weeds around her feet for higher consideration. ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ ”

Shelia Geoffrion has studios in main in Florida, and has exhibited widely in both places. Her work is in the collections of the Farnsworth and Portland Museums of Art, as well as many private collections.

Tom Kidd

Tuesday, October 3

Tom Kidd, an award-winning illustrator, received a scholarship to Syracuse University, for his fantasy illustrations.  After attending for two years, he left for New York, where he pursued illustration full time.

He has since worked for a number of publishers:  William Morrow, Random House, Warner Books, Doubleday, Marvel Comics, St. Martins Press, and Tor Books.  He has illustrated two books:  “The Three Musketeers” and “War of the Worlds,” and there is a book of his art, “The Tom Kidd Sketchbook.”  There are even trading cards and a screen saver on his paintings.

His publishing work has won him three Chesley Awards, on Anlab, and a Golden Pagoda, as well as garnering him four Hugo nominations.

Kidd has also done design work for film, theme parks, entertainment products, and figurines for such clients as Walt Disney Feature Animation, Rhythm and Hues, Universal Studios, Franklin Mint, Danbury Mint, Buddy-L Toys, Mayfair Games, and Second Nature Software.  His work has been displayed in a wide array of venues, including the Delaware Art Museum, The Society of Illustrators, The Canton Museum of Art, and The NASA Future Art Expedition.

He currently resides in New Milford, Connecticut.

Adele Alsop

Tuesday, October 17

Adele Alsop, in her twenty years of one-person exhibitions (first at David Findlay, then at Schmidt Bingham – most recently at Alexandre) in New York, has developed a body of work, which expands the vocabulary of landscape painting. Writing in the New York

Times, Grace Glueck says, “ The loose, expressive brush strokes of Adele Alsop, a transplanted New Englander living in Utah, conjure up vivid, lush landscapes and still life’s that radiate energy. Trees, purple mountains, restless ponds, blooming desert country, vases and whole gardens of exuberant flowers are celebrated in this sunny, buoyantly wrought work, which seems to spring from action painting.” In the catalog of her most recent exhibition at Alexandre Gallery, the poet Jamie Manrique describes them as “In the more traditional landscapes, Alsop’s many gifts come together and sing: she creates a symphony of enraptured color that one could not have predicted from her earlier work. Yet these paintings are not merely beautiful. In the strongest of the landscapes, Alsop’s depth of emotion, her use of tone, atmosphere and mood create a powerful psychological tension. … The brushwork here is borrowed from Abstract Expressionism, the paint seemingly applied with the entire body, they canvas serving as the point of engagement between the landscape and Alsop’s psyche. Hence the erotic charge of the paintings, and that’s perhaps why they stand not only in the tradition of Titian but also in the tradition of pantheistic writers like Thomas Hardy and .H. Lawrence. These works do not appear to have been painted on an easel, but on a rock, a tree, something a part of nature itself.” 

In Art in America, Gerrit Henry summarizes …”it’s amazing that an artist so well versed in the 20^th century should so fluently be able to call up a painter like Rembrandt, in the fulsomeness and acuity of stroke and hue in Quicksilver Pond (2002), brusque and brash grays, silvers and whites smartly echoing the title. … But it is really Alsop’s own spirit that hovers over and, somehow, inhabits all her work. This painter is far and away the most stunning and achieved of her generational peers.”

Adele Alsop has a M.F.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied with Neil Welliver. Her work is included in many major collections and museum exhibitions of landscape painting. 

Grace Devito

Tuesday, October 31

Grace Devito received her B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York City, and studied at the Art Students League. She began her career in the arts as an illustrator working for clients such as the United Nations Postal Administration, The Franklin Mint, and the Ford Motor Company. She is the recipient of numerous awards including First Place from the Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists, a Silver medal from the Society of Illustrators, and a Gold Addy.

Trained in Old Master technique she now devotes much of her time to portrait commissions. Her work is in many private and public collections including: The United Nations, The Diocese of Bridgeport, Sony, PepsiCo, Northwestern Mutual, The Reynolds Corporation, The government of Nicaragua and The New England Coffee Company.

She currently lives in Stamford, Connecticut.

James McGarrell

Tuesday, November 14

James McGarrell's paintings imaginatively juxtapose recognizable forms and hint at narrative.  They have often been called surrealist, but the artist rejects this label.  "Fiction painting" and the reference one critic made to the daydream-like nature of his work, are far more accurate descriptions as his work essentially does not invent a hallucinatory reality but rather makes reference to things of this world.  Indeed his paintings are true to life: while they do not try to copy reality by naturalistically illustrating what one place looks like at one moment, the animated interactions between the paintings' diverse elements accurately portray the ever-changing collage-like human experience of passing through and reacting to the surrounding world.

This prolific artist has completed many series of work which, taken in survey, show constant evolution of style.  The artist's work belongs to many major collections and he has exhibited widely including at The Whitney, The Hirshorn, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Venice Biennale, The Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Tate Gallery.

Selina Trieff

Tuesday, November 28

Writing in the New York Times, critic John Russell, describes Selina Trieff as “an American original…  Her chief subject is herself—but herself in many guises.  Dressed up, partnered by herself in compositions that echo the Old Masters….  She maintains throughout a hieratic stance.”

Selina Trieff attended the Arts Students League, the Hans Hofmann School and Brooklyn College and studied with Hans Hoffman, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt.  She has exhibited in one-person and group shows in many national and international museums and galleries including Lou Brookstein Gallery, Katherine Rich Perlow Gallery, Graham Modern Gallery, and Allen Stone Gallery (all in New York).  Berta Walker Gallery (in Provincetown), the Long Branch Museum, Hudson River Museum, the National Academy of Design, Delaware Art Museum, Provincetown Art Association, Brooklyn Museum and the Wadsworth Museum.  Her work has been reviewed regularly in the New York Times, Art and Antiques, Art News, Cover Magazine, Provincetown Magazine, Art in America and Art Forum.  In much demand for her insightful teaching, she has taught at the National Academy of Design, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Studio School, the Fine Arts Work Center (in Provincetown), and the New York Figurative Academy.

Ms. Trieff will show a 2004 film, which was commissioned by the City Museum of New York, on herself and her husband, Robert Henry, entitled Their Lives in Art, Robert Henry and Selina Trieff.

Mark Hess

Tuesday, December 12

Mark Hess was a rodeo bull rider before attending the University of Colorado and majoring in fine arts. Since his first Time Magazine cover was published at the tender age of 20, he has won countless awards, and has a stellar client list that includes, in part, ABC, Atlantic, Budweiser, Bard College, C.B.S., Forbes, Fortune, IBM, Mobil Masterpiece Theatre, New York Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times, Time Warner, the U.S. Postal Service, the United Nations. A diversely talented artist, Mark’s firm also creates corporate identity, web design, packaging and other graphic design applications. He has exhibited worldwide in venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution, which has purchased 41 of his works.