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“All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore. ”
― Herman Melville
L O O M I N G S Paintings in Oil and Tar
The paintings in LOOMINGS, named after the first chapter of Moby-Dick, are executed in tar, bitumen (a naturally occurring petroleum asphalt), and oil paint. In these paintings, I've wanted the the natural color of the tar to evoke at times the sepia of old photographs and etchings, at others a stark, enveloping organic darkness.
Modern global industrialization began with the Quaker whaling ships that sailed out of New England; whale oil lit the Victorian world and fueled the onset of the industrial revolution in England and America. Whale oil was replaced by the discovery in 1859 of petroleum, from which the tar I use is derived. Nineteenth-century sailors used tar to waterproof hulls and wooden tools. As the basis of multinational corporate globalization, petroleum/oil/asphalt/tar points to the triumphs as well as the failings of modern human achievement. It also resonates for me as the paved acreage of my suburban childhood home on Long Island sound.
The series was inspired by Melville’s apocalyptic vision of the American quest as well as nineteenth-century New Bedford-born painter Albert Pinkham Ryder’s work and his use of tar, presumably for its slick, dark blacks. Several titles are quotes taken from Melville’s novel. “Contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America,” Nathaniel Philbrick has written, “all the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1775, civil war in 1861, and continue to drive this country’s ever-contentious march into the future.” Several paintings explicitly reference solitary sailing ships adrift on troubled seas, an ancient metaphor for the human predicament in general.
After 150 additional years of oil-driven industrialization, humanity continues to exploit nature without adequately understanding our place within it or even our own history, still tempting Ahab's unknowable gods, and flouting signs and portents of extinction.
- Christopher Volpe
Acushnet, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 36 inches(Acushnet was the name of the ship Melville shipped on and then abandoned in the Marquesas Islands in 1841)
Any Human Thing, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches(“I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”)
Squall, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches(“I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol- fire your ship right into it!”)
Fata Morgana, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Towards Thee I Roll, 2016, bitumen and oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
True Places, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”)
T’Gallant Sails, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Horizon Sails 3 (The Albatross), 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 24 x 18 inches
T’Gallant Sails (detail)
Horizon Sails 1 (The Delight), 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 18 x 18 inches
Flukes, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
The Muffled Rolling of a Milky Sea, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
White Whale, 2015, bitumen and tar on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
Break, Break, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft (Painting at the Spouter-Inn), 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 16 x 24 inches
A Note on “Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft (Painting at the Spouter-Inn)”
LOOMINGS began in response to Ishmael’s description, in chapter three, of an old maritime painting, so begrimed and inscrutable as to be nearly abstract, hanging in the Spouter-Inn at New Bedford.
After speculating about what the artist meant to show (“the unnatural combat of the four primal elements,” “chaos bewitched”) Ishmael focuses on “a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture.” He finally decides the painting represents “a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.”
The series represented in LOOMINGS followed from “Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft,” the result of my desire to create a real painting based on the description in Moby-Dick.
All that Most Maddens and Torments, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
Any Human Thing (detail)
Christopher Volpe
Solo Exhibitions
Borderlands, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2016
LOOMINGS, Owen Smith Shuman Art Gallery, Groton Public Library, 2016
Seacoast Squared, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2015
Sea & Sky, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2013
Dream Diary, Loft 3, the Gallery at 194 Middle St., Lowell, MA, 2013
Paintings of the Isles of Shoals, Portsmouth Discovery Center, August 2012
Plein-Air Paintings of the Seacoast, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth, NH 2012
Featured artist, Liberty Hotel, Boston, MA, November 2011 & 2010
Into the Mystic, Solo Show, Kennedy Gallery, 2011
Selected Group Exhibitions
80th Regional, Fitchburg Museum, Fitchburg, MA, 2015
Icons, with Patrick McCay, Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2015
Boston International Fine Art Show, 2009-2014
Unreliable Witnesses, Loading Dock Gallery, Lowell, MA, 2015
Flowers in Winter, Portsmouth Discovery Center, Portsmouth NH, 2014
Invitational Fine Art Show, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 2012
Lake Effect, The Banks Gallery, Castle in the Clouds, Moultonborough, NH, 2012
Featured Artist, Hatfield Gallery, Manchester NH, 2012
Reflection, with Stan Moeller, Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA, September 2011
Starry Night (Paintings of Star Island), Banks Gallery, Portsmouth, NH, 2009
Island Light, Banks Gallery, Portsmouth, NH, 2008
UNH Faculty and Staff Show, Durham, NH, 2008
Publications
Christopher Volpe’s Black Paintings, Mud Season Review #12, September 2015
Residencies, Grants & Awards
Artist in Residence, AMC Highland Center, Brentwood, NH, 2014, 2015
Artist in Residence, Star Island, NH, Star Island Corp., 2014-2015
Artist Advancement Grant, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, 2012
Assets for Artists Grant, Mass MoCA & the Midas Collaborative, 2011
Graphic Arts Program Advisory Board, Manchester College, 2010
New Hampshire Humanities Council Grant, 2010
McNair Faculty Mentor, University of New Hampshire, 2006
Calderwood Fellowship for teaching writing across the disciplines, Boston Athenaeum and Franklin Pierce College, 2005
Ann Pazo Mayberry award for poetry, University of New Hampshire, 1996
Contact
www.christophervolpe.com
603.770.3058 [email protected]