BARBARA ERNST PREY
"Works on Water"
October 10 - December 2, 2006
Water Street Gallery at the Seamen's Church Institute, 241 Water Street, Lower Manhattan near the South Street Seaport
9am-5pm, Weekdays
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The Water Street Gallery
at The Seamen’s Church Institute is pleased to present the works of renowned
artist Barbara Ernst Prey “Presence and
Absence: Works on Water” October 10 – December 2, 2006. Prey has been
recognized as one of the most significant artists of our time. The exhibit is
accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Corcoran Gallery of Art Curator
Sarah Cash. Cash writes, “These structures connect us, as viewers, to the land (and
the sea); these scenes link us to place, history, and elemental human pursuits
in the face of our frenetic, technology-dominated lives…The pristine landscapes
and seascapes of this series suggest the power and permanence of nature in
contrast to the relative transience of human life.” The 20 large monumental
watercolors and 10 smaller new works in this exhibit take a new direction. Prey
is a virtuoso who knows the rules and breaks them to enter new creative ground.
In Talk of the Town, The New Yorker,
Ben McGrath wrote, Barbara Ernst Prey “may be, at this moment, the most widely
viewed painter in the world.” (Dec. 15, 2003)
The
Seamen’s Church Institute advocates for the personal, professional, and
spiritual well being of merchant mariners worldwide and is a resource for legal
research, education, advocacy and assistance on seafarers’ rights issues. The
series of paintings, “Works on Water” developed out of Prey’s many years of her
connection to and living with fishing communities in Maine
and Long Island. “We romanticize the fishermen
but in reality it is a tough life with problems such as alcoholism and drug
abuse. Fishermen are my neighbors and friends, one of the boats I often painted
sank just off shore last summer with the captain trapped underneath. It’s a
gritty life behind the paintings. The Seamen’s Church Institute seems a very
good venue for this body of work,” said Prey.
Prey
is an international ambassador for our country with paintings on exhibit in
U.S. Embassies abroad through the U.S. Arts in Embassies Program. Her painting
“God and Country” from her 9/11
series is on view at the United States Embassy in Paris, hanging in the company of works by
major American artists including Sargant, Homer and Hopper. She is the only living American painter included
in the exhibit. Eight of her paintings are currently on exhibit at the U.S.
Embassy in Madrid,
again including a number of works from her 9/11 series. She was invited this
March to speak about her work to the cultural leaders of both France and Spain. As Robert Koshalek, Director
of the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles writes, “This
extraordinary program presents the very best work by the most innovative
artists in the U.S.
to an audience throughout the world. It has set a standard of quality which is
recognized by the entire artistic community and is appreciated by the visitors
to American Embassies worldwide.”
Prey
is considered one of the foremost landscape painters active in the United States
today. The National Gallery of Art in Washington
D.C. invited Prey to lecture on
“The Watercolors of Winslow Homer” for this year’s Homer exhibit at the Museum
which testifies to the central position her work plays in the continuing
history of American Art. One of her paintings is in The White House permanent
collection. Prey’s more than 30 year development as
an artist is shaped by a strong grounding in the history of art, disciplined
field and studio practice characterized by intense and exacting study of
subject, color, and light, as well as a rich accumulation of life experiences. Closer to home Prey’s large scale painting “Gallantly Streaming”, part of a body of
work done in response to 9/11, was requested by First Lady of New York Libby
Pataki to hang in her New York
office.
Curator Cash writes that in Prey’s
paintings, “Our imaginations are enticed not only by the houses, boats, and
sheds themselves, but also by the exquisitely wrought details that animate the
compositions These details are nowhere more densely worked or meticulously
rendered than in the group of winter workshop interiors, the most innovative
compositions in this series and an entirely new subject for Prey. Inspired in
part by her work on the 2003 White House Christmas card, these intricately
composed works also testify to her predilection for strong color and her interest
in probing beneath exterior appearances. “I’ve always been fascinated with what
is inside, from the outside looking in,” the artist admits, voicing the
innocently voyeuristic desire present in most of us. The two most ambitious
watercolors in the sub-series, for example, Blue
Note and Bait House, provide
glimpses into these bright and congenial havens for the off-season work of trap
repair, buoy painting, and line cleaning, as well as socializing. The tiers
upon tiers of painstakingly drawn and painted buoys¾still lives, as the artist notes¾provide a stark contrast to the windows
betraying the cold, foggy coastline beyond. Together, these elements comprise a
perfect case study of Prey’s mastery of the unforgiving medium of watercolor.
Completely different, but just as compelling, is the effect in the masterful The Simple Life.
Like the lobster fisherman’s hardscrabble, tradition-laden work so
easily overlooked by the tourist who sees only the romanticism of the seafaring
life, the rigors and complexities of Prey’s own work may, to some, be eclipsed
by the peacefulness of her images. Pure form and hue are here judged on their
own considerable merits, but the viewer is simultaneously challenged to
question existing assumptions about the appearance of watercolor; these are,
after all, more paintings than works on paper in their edge-to-edge color and
in their many layers of wash, allowing alternating passages of translucency and
opacity. Moreover, we are provoked to think more deeply about their subject matter;
to imagine beyond the vessels and buildings, venturing in our mind’s eye deep
into the lives and spirits of their unseen occupants.”
Prey
was recently honored by the New York State Senate with the Senate’s prestigious
“Women of Distinction Award”. She joins previous honorees Susan B. Anthony and
Eleanor Roosevelt. The Women of
Distinction program was created in 1998 as a tribute to outstanding New York women. In
addition to historic figures, the Women of Distinction program also recognizes
outstanding women of today.
This year marks Prey’s 4th commission for
NASA, the Shuttle Discovery: Return to
Flight painting. This follows her NASA commissioned painting, Columbia Tribute, to commemorate the
anniversary of the Columbia tragedy which was
unveiled at the National Air and Space
Museum anniversary Tribute Dinner in Washington. A print of
the painting with a quote from the President was given to the astronaut’s
families. Prey was previously commissioned to do a portrait of the
International Space Station which is exhibited at the Kennedy Space
Center, and the x-43, the
fastest aircraft in the world. She joins an elite group of American artists who
have been invited by NASA to document space history including Norman Rockwell
and Andy Warhol. Dr. H. Lester Cooke, former National Gallery of Art Curator
who guided the NASA Arts Program comments, “future generations will realize
that we have not only the scientists and engineers capable of shaping the
destiny of our age but artists worthy to keep them company.”
Prey has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times,
The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Boston
Globe ,CNN, Larry King Live, PBS, NPR, Paula Zahn Now, CNN News Sunday, AP
and Reuters Newswire, The New York Post, The Daily News, The International Art
Newspaper, NBC’s celebrity show EXTRA,
and in a number of books.
Prey is an internationally exhibited artist whose
works has been shown in venues such as: The White House, U.S. Embassy Paris,
U.S. Embassy Madrid,
U.S. Embassy Prague, U.S. Embassy Oslo, Guild
Hall Museum,
East Hampton, New York,
The Heckscher Art Museum, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania
and the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland,
Maine. Her paintings are included
in public collections such as The White House, the Farnsworth Art Museum,
Williams College Museum of Art, The Taiwan Museum of Art, the Henry Luce
Foundation and The Reader’s Digest Collection. Her work is owned by private
collectors including President and Mrs. George W. Bush, The White House; Mrs.
Henry Luce III, President and Mrs. George Bush, Nobel Laureate Dr. and Mrs.
James Watson, Ambassador and Mrs. Craig Stapleton and Prince and Princess
Johannes Lobkowicz.
Prey
graduated from Williams College where she studied with Lane Faison and has a
master’s degree from Harvard
University where she was
able to continue her art history studies. She was awarded a Fulbright
Scholarship and a Henry Luce Foundation grant for her work, which enabled her
to travel, study and exhibit extensively in Europe and Asia.
Exhibition: October 10 – December 2,
2006
Opening
Reception: Thursday, October 17 from
6–8pm
Gallery
Location: 241 Water Street, New
York, NY 10038
Gallery Hours:
Monday
through Friday from 9am–5pm, and by appointment
For more
information and press photos: Seamen’s Church Institute contact Debra Wagner (212)
349-9090, 241 Water St.,
New York 10038
and Jane Roel (516)-909-8205.
email: sci@seamenschurch.org website: www.barbaraprey.com
Photos available upon request.