COMMUNITY ON CANVAS
QUOGUE’S CYNTHIA NEUENDORF HAS CREATED AN ARTISTS’ SALON FOR TODAY’S EAST END. BY JULIE EARLE-LEVINE PHOTOGRAPHY BY DOUG YOUNG
Quogue’s Cynthia Neuendorf has created an artists’ salon for today’s East End.
For more than two centuries, the shimmering light and sublime vistas of the Hamptons have made it a vibrant gathering place for artists, gallerists, and art lovers, but now Cynthia Neuendorf wants to bring them all under one roof. Her new gallery, The Artist Study, is not only an exhibition space but also a working studio, as well as a classroom where anyone can pick up a brush and learn from the area’s most accomplished artists.
A Quogue resident and a Hamptonite for 17 years, Neuendorf wants her space to serve as a sort of 21st-century artists’ salon, where painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and other artists, as well as members of the community, can congregate. “We are on a very specific mission,” she says, “to educate, inspire, and foster an art community through professional programs of study and art exhibitions that promote the creative process as an important role in growth and progress.”
Neuendorf, who studied fashion design, has deep ties to the artistic community of the Hamptons. She sold art at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor before launching the Sag Harbor Fine Arts Center on Rose Street and now The Artist Study.
At its opening in April, some 100 guests viewed works by Megan K. Euell, a young artist
who studied at the Florence Academy of Art, and Timothy Mcguire. Many of the gallery’s artists will also be teaching classes and workshops, such as a recent Figure Drawing & Painting Intensive with Euell and a landscape painting class at Wölffer Estate Vineyard. There will also be yoga classes, workshops in creative expression and healing arts—even a leather artist crafting bespoke shoes: Visitors can watch Francis Waplinger at his workbench fashioning madeto-measure shoes for men and women, including oxfords, derbies, and loafers that start at $3,000.
“The idea is to have a very sustainable gallery,” says Neuendorf, “not just paintings flying out the door, but people to invest in the movement of what we’re doing and in the artists themselves.”
Guests can contemplate the art from the antique chairs that Neuendorf has collected, or they can pick up one of the small sketches arranged on tables and feel the artist’s work in their hands. “We wanted to make it accessible and for people to understand how this art is made,” she says. One of the things she loves about Europe, Neuendorf adds, is that “if you go to the Louvre and you’re a woman with two kids, you’re pushed to the front of the line. They understand the importance of kids seeing fine art and materials and how that affects them. We are striving for that here.” 25 Hampton Road, Southampton, 631-6435514; theartiststudy.com