Rye Tippett, Concord, oil on panel | 36 x 48 inches

The allusive nature of Rye Tippett’s latest paintings invites thoughts about where dreams join reality, how the past informs the present, and whether the departed commune with the living.  

A horse gallops across the morning sky; ghosts warm themselves by a wood stove in a winter field; phantom sea creatures loom above the trees; and a resurrected ship defies the gravitational pull of the vast waters it once sailed, escorted by the ghosts of those they protected. 

Those familiar with Tippet’s work will recognize the evocative landscapes, reminiscent of the Bucks County countryside, and hovering subjects, and wonder: Where do they come from? 

"I don't know where they come from, it only just is,” Tippett says.  “They come to me like a horse in the dark. It's all just a dream that never stops working."  

In these dreams, Tippet’s reverence for the past is unmistakable. The former grandeur of man-made machines and historic scenes of peasant prayer are set against sweeping landscapes and expansive skies. Animals like horses and whales also loom large, as if having rushed to the fore to greet us and command our attention. The scenes mysteriously combine the majestic with the humble, the living with the dead, and the past with the present.

Justin Long’s sculpture also pays homage to the past. His farm series draws inspiration from the local countryside and the tools that worked the fields from days long gone. Collecting artifacts from surrounding farmlands near his home in rural Pennsylvania, Long skillfully reimagines them into new expressive forms. Animated by a combination of gesture and abstraction, their surface­ – a warm patina of rust and steel– beautifully underscores their years of utilitarian purpose.   

Long is a graduate of the Solebury School, where his love of making art began. He later went on to study fine art at Alfred University where he developed his unique style.