40th Anniversary Painting Exhibit Barbara Prey: Still Light Opens August 1

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Jul 28, 2023, 10:00 ET

"She is, quite simply put, the world's pre-eminent watercolorist, persisting over the past four decades in the mastery of her idiom." -Museum Director Charles Riley

PORT CLYDE, Maine , July 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Barbara Prey Projects announces Still Light August 1 – September 4 an exhibition of Barbara Prey's new monumental watercolors which push the medium in new directions and size, continuing the investigation between reality and imagination.

Her attention to details recalls Vermeer..it's a painter's job to notice, and to draw out the nuance and light in what the rest of us ignore. Prey has that eye and hand... what she makes touches the divine and has staying power. -The Boston Globe

Barbara Prey with her MASS MoCA commissioned painting. The museum commissioned Prey to paint the largest watercolor in the world for the opening of their new Building 6. The painting, on long term exhibit is of the building's interior before renovation. Prey's architectural drawings appeared in The New Yorker for 10 years. Her other interior paintings include the Presidential commissioned White House Christmas Card (collection the White House) and The National Gallery's ‘Fibonacci’s Workshop.’

‘Gatekeeper,’ watercolor on paper 40x60 inches. Part of the Nocturne Series highlights Prey's use of color and light incorporating atmosphere from her NASA commissioned work of the International Space Station, on exhibit at Kennedy Space Center. The watercolor's large size is an extension of her MASS MoCA commission which is considered the largest watercolor in the world currently on long term view at the museum. Prey draws inspiration from nature and augments what is real.

The artist's innovative eye for the American landscape has placed her paintings in the private collections of U.S. Presidents and dignitaries, business titans, European Royalty, celebrities including Orlando Bloom and Tom Hanks, as well as the prominent public collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kennedy Space Center and the permanent collection of The White House, where she is one of two living female artists represented, among many other institutions. Commissioned by NASA (the only female commissioned four times), she was recently commissioned by contemporary art museum MASS MoCA to paint the largest watercolor in the world for their new building currently on long term exhibition at the museum. PBS referred to the MASS MoCA commissioned artists as "global leaders in contemporary art". Prey was appointed by the President of the United States to the National Council on the Arts, the advisory board to the National Endowment for the Arts. Artists are appointed for their contributions and recognition in American Art

Prey's highly original approach to painting has challenged conventional understandings of the genre. She steers her way between realism and abstraction, painterliness and reduction, perception and synthesis. She references art history but transcends and creates a contemporary view with her unmistakable voice., establishing within the trajectory of American Art a 21^st Century female lens. As an artist working often en plein air, environmental issues and climate change are concerns that inform her paintings. Her layered, luminous, and nuanced paintings also speak to issues of gender, climate and ecology, and spiritual wonder. Prey's practice evokes the seemingly every day to push the boundaries of what the medium of watercolor can do

Presskit: barbarapreyprojects.com/presskit

BARBARA PREY PROJECTS
Main Street, Port Clyde, Maine
207.372.8087
[email protected] www.barbaraprey.com

SOURCE Barbara Prey Projects