Female still life artists show impeccable technique
In the Baum School exhibit “Simply Still,” the work of four Lehigh Valley women of varying ages and backgrounds reveals real threads between their canvases — and lives — and serves as inspiration for future generations of artists.
The women work in contemporary and traditional styles of realism — more specifically, still-life — and show a mastery of their media.
Coming together are oil painters Sandra Corpora and Lauren Kindle, pastelist Jacqueline Meyerson and watercolorist Elena Shackleton.
There are 56 paintings in the salon-style exhibition, a relaxing, colorful walk-through tableau of varying forms, textures and compositions. There are scenes of tables filled with flowers and fruit, as well as such commonplace objects as glass bottles and jars, fabric, and playing cards. Some work was created for the show.
The joy here is not only in the exquisitely rendered work, but there also is an education in art technique in every painting.
“This is really important for our students,” says Kris Kotsch, gallery director at Baum, which has been teaching traditional painting techniques since its founding in Allentown by the noted Pennsylvania Impressionist painter and art teacher Walter Emerson Baum in 1926. “I wanted to kick off the new year with a traditional show.”
Kotsch says she also wanted to feature female artists, and the artists she chose have a history with the Baum School. Some have had previous exhibitions. Corpora is a long-time friend of the school. Meyerson teaches at Baum. Shackleton used to teach there and is president of the Lehigh Art Alliance. Kindle took classes at Baum.
Their stories have similarities, yet each came to paint the way they do, in their medium of choice, via different paths — and with a lot of stops, starts and interruptions — but always with the same passion.
Corpora says she had drawing and painting ability at an early age and went on to earn a BFA in painting from Kutztown University.
“Star Blue Hydrangea,” an oil on aluminum painted for the show, is just what the title says. A glass vase of blue flowers, their petals in bloom, is flanked by a star, a green apple and a peacock feather. Corpora’s application of paint is expressive, fluid with solid brushstrokes that accentuate her vivid colors.
After a career as an art director at Rodale Publications, Corpora returned to serious painting in the 1990s, studying pleinair landscape and still life. “It’s satisfying when you feel you’ve made another leap in your skills,” she says.
She studied in workshops with such notable artists as Kenn Backhaus, Nelson Shanks, John Osborne, T.M. Nicolas and Scott Jennings and is a signature member of Oil Painters of America. She has won many awards, teaches and conducts workshops. Her work can be found in private and public collections in Italy, Canada, Norway and the U.S.
“No Regrets, She Said” by Lauren Kindle is a small oil on canvas showing a dissected pomegranate, the glistening deep red seeds moist and fresh. Kindle’s painted surfaces are filled with texture, as if painted on stone or concrete and reveal a quiet energy in her subjects.
Kindle started painting seriously four years ago. Also a writer, the Easton resident finds inspiration in family, neighbors, local architecture and landscape.
Her still lifes portray objects that surround her in daily life, or are found in other artists’ work, and even in her own dreams and fantasies.
Kindle earned a BA from Hampshire College in 2003, studying Arts and Classics. She has studied painting with Frank Arcuri and the Baum’s Adriano Farinella. She spent the summer of 2017 in Italy on a residency program and that same year was named Artist of the Year by the Arts Community of Easton.
Meyerson says she “learned by accident, and I made a lot of mistakes.” She began living the life of an artist 16 years ago after she gave up her full-time job as a controller of a small electronics firm to concentrate on painting. While she always had an affection for drawing, she didn’t pursue art as a profession until 2001.
Meyerson is recognized as a Master Pastelist by the prestigious Pastel Society of America and has been voted one of the top 100 pastel artists in the world by the Pastel Journal, as well as receiving many other awards.
Her “5 Cobalt Bottles” from 2018 is a tour de force, a scene of five cobalt blue glass bottles arranged on a table of muted brown/gray. The attention to detail, the capturing of every glint of light, and every hue and value properly arranged and executed, is astounding.
“I think my style is very classical,” says Meyerson, “but my subject is very current in the way I’m finding the emotion in the subject.”
Shackleton began her artistic journey at an age earlier than most. At 10 she became an apprentice to Pat Witt, who was known as Artist Laureate of Millville, N.J. Through Witt, Shackleton says, she was exposed to the teaching of artists from The Philadelphia Museum School, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the
Cape School of Art, where she acquired her color sense and an impressionist eye for light.
She went on to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with a concentration in painting and drawing and
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‘Simply Still’
continued to develop her realist/colorist work through both studio painting and plein-air.
Shackleton stopped painting for years as she worked and raised children, but in the 1990s she returned to painting and teaching art.
Works like “Iris and False Indigo,” an oil depicting a vase with flowers, and the watercolor “Paperwhites and Pears” are lush in execution. Shackleton’s expertise in color, line and form show her mastery over her medium.
“People feel watercolor is set in stone,” Shackleton says, “but you just have to approach it differently.”
Tim Higgins is a freelance writer. jodi.duckett@mcall.com 610-820-6704