RYE TIPPETT | Paintings + JUSTIN LONG | Sculpture

THEY BY NIGHT, oil on panel, 30 × 24” | Bighorn, repurposed steel, 72 × 31 x 29 inches

For both Rye Tippett and Justin Long, the environments they grew up in inspired their artistic careers.

Rye Tippett recalls knowing that he wanted to create art as early as age four. He credits his family’s encouragement: His mother took painting lessons herself, his grandfather shared his love of the rural realist paintings of the Wyeth’s, and an uncle was a well-known painter in the 60’s. Largely self-taught Tippett found time to learn about art while working at his father’s roofing company. He painted as often as he could, recalling: “It was really the only thing that ever felt right to me, it’s the only thing I’m confident about.”

Today, his home and studio in Furlong, Pennsylvania are not far from “the dirty shed outside Croton,” where his artistic journey began. His paintings pairs familiar skies, fields, or waters with the unexpected – a majestic bison, a historic steamboat, a vintage Volkswagen, or phantasmal whales and figures. Tippett began exhibiting his work in the nineties, in New York City as well as the Lambertville area, before first showing at Morpeth in 2018. His paintings and poetry have been published in the literary and visual art magazines “Under the Gum Tree” and “Tidings of the Magpies,” and he is the featured artist in the current issue of “Rivertowns Magazine.”

Justin Long, like Rye Tippett, spent much of his youth in nature. It felt more comfortable to him than school, but his teachers recognized this connection and fostered his creativity to help him learn. “Creativity became the place where I felt most capable and most myself,” he says. “I loved drawing in sketchbooks and working with my hands.”

After graduating from the Solebury School, Long studied fine art at Alfred University, where he realized that sculpture was his calling and developed his unique style. He also took inspiration from the regional arts community, “I entered the homes and studios of established artists and was deeply inspired by both the artwork and the people.” 

Working out of his studio in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, Long has created sculptures from carved stone and hand-formed steel for the last twenty years. The work on view at Morpeth is from the “The Farm Series,” inspired by the countryside of Bucks County and the tools that worked the fields of the past. Long collects artifacts from surrounding farmlands and transforms them, through forging and welding into animals and figures. Often the parts are recognizable, a wheel from an old hay rake become the horns of a ram, an old tractor seat, the breast of an owl.

Tippett and Long, years after a childhood spark, continue to find inspiration in their surroundings, and find home in the process of making their art.