A descendant of both president John Adams and general Robert E. Lee, Mary Abbott was born in Boston and grew up in New York City and Washington, D.C. She studied at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C. and later at the Art Students League, New York. In the late 1940s, she was introduced by her friend the sculptor David Hare to the Subjects of the Artist School, which he had founded along with the New York School painters William Baziotes, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko as a place for students to leave their artistic past behind and draw from the imagination. Abbott's early exposure to Abstract Expressionism provided a framework for her work for the next sixty years. For Abbott, nature is a “jumping off point,” from which she takes risks and relies on impulse. Gesture, light, and color inform her abstract works, which seem at once electric and subtle. Considered an “artist's artist,” Abbott has been receiving increasing critical recognition in recent years. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum; the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; the Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Weisman Museum, Minneapolis. An important solo show of Abbott's work was held in 2004 at the Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago. View Works »

Shari Abramson, who received her B.A. in art history from the State University of New York, Stonybrook, and her M.A. in art education from New York University, creates abstract paintings in which shapes informed by nature and light glide through translucent fields of color and line, evoking qualities of depth, atmosphere, and reflection. For example, in Sunday, colorful, soft-edged, crowded shapes seem to float above an imaginary landscape, while two smaller canvases rely on whiteness to ground dispersed forms. Abramson's work has been included in exhibitions in galleries on Long Island, including the Springs invitationals of 2006 and 2007. View Works »

Deborah Black received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute, New York, and received further training in New York at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League. Her current paintings consist of acrylics on heavy paper mounted on canvas.  Black uses an expressionist approach to landscape, simplifying elements with gestural strokes and strong color.  In her works, light passes through the sky and land in various hues. Even in the most abstract of her works, trees seem to stand as quiet sentinels guarding the surrounding environment.  Black has shown her work in exhibitions at the Bergen Museum of Art, Norway; Dannenberg Gallery, New York ; Massimo Adeliamo Gallery, New York; the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, Connecticut; and the Spirituality and Human Development Center, Ansonia, Connecticut. View Works »

PRISCILLA BOWDEN

Priscilla Bowden, who studied at the Art Students League, New York, has drawn her subject matter from the East End of Long Island for over forty years, preserving on canvas locations now radically altered by encroaching building development.  Bowden simplifies nature to emphasize the spirit of place. At the same time, her sites are often recognizable, as is confirmed by her specific titling. In this exhibition, one large painting is rendered in a “typical” subtle color, while another is almost “white,” with its pale imagery emerging from a misty ground.  A selection of small paintings included have sometimes served as studies for larger works, but each is an independent statement, as the elements in each are altered. Bowden has exhibited her work at the Arts Club of Washington, D.C.; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; the Heckscher Museum, New York; Lever House, New York; and the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York. Her works belong to the collections of Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; the Museums at Stony Brook, New York; and Southampton Hospital, New York. View Works »

Robert Dash was born in New York City and received a B.A. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.  Beginning with his first solo exhibition in New York, in 1961, his work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. He has had solo exhibitions in England, Germany, and Holland.  His work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.  Over the years, he has moved back and forth between representational and abstract painting.  In the exhibition, two paintings from his Sagg Main series in acrylic on canvas pursue the variation on the theme of one street in his hometown of Sagaponack, New York.  In these paintings, color and form create abstracted environments in a vignette type placement, which relies on the surrounding ground of white to emphasize the contours of natural form. Dash is represented in many public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; Long Island Art Museum, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, Munich, Germany; the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut. View Works »

Elaine de Kooning (born Elaine Marie Catherine Fried) was an important and influential American painter, educator, and art critic, who played a critical role in the New York School. She studied art in New York, at Hunter College , the American Artists School , and the Leonardo da Vinci School of Art in Manhattan . She also studied privately with Willem de Kooning, whom she married in 1943. Elaine de Kooning was an active member of the emerging group of Abstract Expressionists in New York beginning in the 1940s. Her first solo exhibition was in 1952 at the Stable Gallery in New York . She also wrote frequently for the publication Art News during the late 1940s and 1950s. Throughout her long career as an educator, de Kooning held teaching positions at numerous institutions, including Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh,; University of Pennsylvania, University Park; University of Georgia, Athens; and Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Cooper Union, New York, and the Parsons School on Fine Art, New York. She received five honorary doctorate degrees over her multi-faceted career. De Kooning moved easily from portraiture (including a large group of images of John F. Kennedy in 1963) and figurative works to abstraction and landscape painting, culminating in her final Cave Wall series inspired by the paleolithic caves of Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain.   The large painting in this exhibition entitled Foliage (Indoor and Outdoor), 1980  revisits her earlier interest in still-life.  The small work reflects her periodic return to landscape. In 1990, a year after her death from lung cancer, an exhibition of her Black Mountain paintings from 1948, never exhibited in her lifetime, was organized by Arlene Bujese at the Benton Gallery, Southampton, New York .  She has had numerous national and international exhibitions and her work is included in many public collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. View Works »

CORNELIA FOSS

Cornelia Foss was born in Berlin, Germany and spent her early years in Rome before coming to the United States.  She studied at the Kann Institute of Art in Los Angeles and with Rico Lebrun.  She is represented in this exhibition with a large oil of Wainscott Pond, a location she has favored over many years.  In this work, the sky dominates with pale, pinkish light, reflecting off meadow and foliage.  A tiny vehicle directs the eye to the subtly rendered horizon, intensifying the light and vastness of space.   Her smaller works serve as microcosms of nature, portraying details of meadow and vegetation.  Foss has had solo exhibitions at Boston University; the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and St. Gaudens Museum, Cornish, New Hampshire.  Collections in which Foss is represented include the Brooklyn Museum; the Burchfield-Penny Art Center; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York; Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York; the Long Island Museum, State University of New York, Stony Brook; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum for Women, Washington, D.C.; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Oklahoma City Art Museum; University of New York, Buffalo; and the Wichita Art Museum. View Works »

Considered one of Long Island's most celebrated still-life and landscape artists, Jane Freilicher is notable for the way in which she found a creative path between tradition and innovation, producing works in a realist mode informed by a variety of influences from French painting to Abstract Expressionism. She was born in Brooklyn and received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.A. from Columbia University. In the early 1940s she became part of the New York School, developing lifelong friendships with many artists including Larry Rivers and Hans Hofmann, with whom she studied in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Since her first solo show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, in 1951, she has exhibited widely and has received numerous awards, including lifetime achievement awards from the the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; and the National Academy of Design, New York. In this exhibition, Some Trees is an iconic tree image in which the loosely painted foreground is flanked by a distant vista.  In Jonquils and Nasturtiums , colorful flowers move in different directions, seeming to be moving out of their vessels, which themselves float on a light ground overlooking the water.  Freilicher's paintings are in many public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Kansas City Art Institute; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Parrish Museum, Southampton New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. View Works »

CYNTHIA KNOTT (b. 1952)

Cynthia Knott was born in Newark, New Jersey, received a B.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and an M.F.A. from New York University.  The materials in the two large paintings in the exhibition: oil pigment, metallic paint, and encaustic create a luminous surface of minimalist abstraction.  The major force behind the works is light, a fleeting light that is always in transition.  A crucial element in Knott's art is the placement of the horizon, which determines how the energy of light relates to the psychological or spiritual effects of the changing environment.  Knott's art has been in numerous exhibitions at such locales as the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Palmer Museum of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Riverbank Arts Centre, Ireland; and the San Jose Museum of Art, California.  Her work belongs to the Geller Family Art Trust Collection, II; the General Electric Company, Connecticut; and Time-Warner, New York. View Works »

GERSON LEIBER (b. 1921)

A master printmaker and painter, Gerson Leiber has had numerous exhibitions for over fifty years.  He was born in Brooklyn.  Although he showed promise in his high school art classes, it was not until he was stationed in Hungary during World War II that he was able to pursue a study of art, when he took classes at the Royal Academy of Art in Budapest. After the war, he studied at the Art Students League and the Brooklyn Museum 's Art School. He also received instruction in engraving from Gabor Peterdi. After he and his wife Judith, a handbag designer, bought a farmhouse in East Hampton, the garden they created became an inspiration to Gerson. Designing and manipulating the nature shapes, he produced a living, growing Cubism, and the forms and colors of his garden became the focus of much of his art. In Leiber's paintings, landscape and architectural form interact, but it is nature that informs the works with light and energy. Leiber has received numerous prizes including the Benjamin Altman Prize for the figure from the National Academy of Design and the Audubon Medal of Honor for Graphics. He has also received purchase awards from the Association of American Artists; the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston; the National Academy of Design, New York; and the New Jersey State Museum. His work belongs to the following public collections: the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Seattle Art Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. View Works »