Linda Sargent Beach '71
Libby Manchester Gilpatric '62
October 29 - December 3, 2010
Reception, October 29, 5:00 - 7:00 PM
Artist Talk, October 29, 5:30 PM, Bogigian Gallery
http://www.lindabeachstudio.com/
http://web.mac.com/libbygilpatric/Libby_Manchester_Gilpatric_Fine_Art/Welcome.html
Wilson College will hold a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, October 29, to mark the opening of Alumnae Artist Showcase, an exhibit of recent paintings by Wilson College alumnae Libby Manchester Gilpatric, Class of 1962, and Linda Sargent Beach, Class of 1971. The exhibit, presented by Wilson’s Department of Fine Arts and Dance, will continue through Dec. 3 in the Bogigian Gallery, which is located on the second floor of Lortz Hall.
Gilpatric has a bachelor’s degree with concentration in English literature and art history from Wilson and a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been involved with artistic endeavors all of her life, first studying oil painting at the Newport Art Museum and more formally at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Conn. Her paintings are consistently juried into local and regional exhibitions, and she has won numerous awards for her fine work.
Gilpatric paints in a contemporary American realist style, primarily with oil, although she is adept with pastel and watercolor. Her art experience has been mainly with landscapes and figure studies, though she occasionally addresses still life and interiors. Keen powers of observation and love of urban and rural landscapes are the inspiration for her craft. She enjoys creating bold compositions based on everyday scenes, objects, people and animals, emphasizing form and shape, lighting planes of the subject with strong color and value contrasts.
What Gilpatric loves most about painting is "finding ways to engage your attention with a variety of subject, creating a visual pathway using various forms of contrast – contrast in color, value, shape, line – and repetition in some measured degree of those elements."
Beach is a native of Cohasset, MA, and received a bachelor’s degree from Wilson before earning a master’s degree in art education from Central Connecticut State University. She has studied a wide variety of media in locations such as Canyon Road in Santa Fe and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Beach is an active board member of both the Livermore and Pleasanton Art Leagues and an associate member of the Pastel Society of the West Coast and the Sierra Pastel Society. Her work has been exhibited in group and juried shows in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Her current work is comprised of landscapes that depict a sense of distance and evoke a mood of quiet contemplation. Beach says she is “as eager to capture the warmth of a color - washed setting sun on a western sky, as the myriad of reflections in the cool waters of New England. This variety of surroundings and the perspectives gained from my career as an art educator continues to nourish and challenge my creativity.”