Current Exhibit
The Bruce S. Kershner Gallery in the Fairfield Public Library invites the public to a reception for “Moon Dance”, artwork by Ronnie Gold, Steven Labkoff and Marjorie Sopkin on Thursday, February 23 at 5:30 to 7:30 pm. They will talk about their work at 6:00 pm The show can be seen from February 18 to April 15 during library hours.
Ronnie Gold attended the High School of Art and Design, received a BFA from University of Colorado and attended Tyler School of Art in Rome. A resident of North Stamford, Ronnie has been a member of Rowayton Art Center, Greenwich Art Society, Silvermine Guild, Connecticut Pastel Society and the Red Rock Nevada Pastel Society, and now the Pastel Society of America. Her work has won many awards, including the Faber Birren National Color Award.
After a successful career designing home decorative fabrics, she turned to painting full time about 6 years ago. A recent trip to Croatia exemplified a multitude of inspiration for her most recent works..Not having the constraints of fashion or market dictates, she uses pastels and paint to create her art in an abstract expressionist style. She states, “I recently have been drawn to organic forms from nature, such as rock formations, minerals and sea creatures as inspiration for my work. I start with a photo or two taken on my travels and choose my color palette. I generally begin with an underpainting of fluid acrylics or watercolors and then sometimes add surface texture to the substrate with clear gesso. I begin with brushstrokes of a few colors, not really knowing where I end up as I get lost in the process of building up the surface.”
Steven Labkoff is a physician and an award-winning Master Photographer based in Stamford, Connecticut. Since the age of 9, he has captured life as it happens through his lens. His goal is to provide a point of view on a subject that the viewer might not otherwise be able to see on their own. His photographic works include astro-, aerial-, time lapse, and macrophotography. He has a special affinity to moonrise and other night photography subjects such as the Aurora Borealis and cityscapes.
His photos have been published in newspapers, books and on websites and exhibited from Europe to Israel and across the US. Steve was a recipient of silver medal in the Professional Photographers of America’s 2022 and 2020 International Photography Competitions, Best in Show, the 2020 Carriage Barn Photography Show, , including TOPS in Connecticut 2019, Photographer of the Year 2019, Photograph-of-the-Year 2018 at the Stamford Photography Club and Best in Show at the Duchess Regional Professional Photographers Club, a regional PPA club. His work has been in several juried shows across the region. He is available for commission work for stills, landscapes, and drone photography.
Marjorie Sopkin attended the Hartford Art School and Tyler School of Art where she spent a year in Rome and received her BFA. After college she exhibited in New York and throughout New England before embarking on a successful 30-year career in graphic design. She eventually opened her own award-winning studio, Sopkin Design and had many long-standing clients including Yale-New Haven Hospital.
In 2015, Marjorie returned to painting full-time. She is affiliated with The Painting Center in New York City and with many art associations. Her work is in private and corporate collections throughout this country and in London, and India.
Marjorie states,”Teetering between reality and fantasy, my work happens fluidly. I rarely plan, but rather go where the moment takes me. Oftentimes the result is a landscape. Witnessing cloud movement, light, and reflections is sublime. An eye on the horizon is grounding and often surreal and has had a continual presence in my work. The ever-changing colors, atmospheric subtleties and textural qualities in the sky, sea and earth supply unending inspiration that I present through my own imaginary lens. While my current work is somewhat devoid of figurative elements, for me, the floating shapes represent all living organisms, moving through time and space… Our differences make us unique and recognizable, but we all start out as a single cell. Forever an optimist, my intent is to paint scenes of my own invention, depicting a world where peace and camaraderie exist, and the ‘live and let live’ philosophy that is all too often missing in these troubled times, prevails.
For questions, email bskgallery@gmail.com or call 203-246-9065.
Coming Soon
The Kershner Gallery in the Fairfield Public Library invites the public to “Places to Wander”, a reception for the artwork of Jason Pritchard, Rebeca Fuchs, and Kate Henderson on April 27 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. The artists will talk about their work at 6 pm. The show can be seen from April 22 to June 17 during library hours. For questions, email bskgallery@gmail.com or call 203-246-9065.
JASON PRITCHARD grew up in the UK, in a region that inspired British landscape painters such as John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough who he greatly admires. In his 20’s he moved to London and took up watercolor painting, before moving to New York in 2005 where he studied oil painting at the Art Students League. Recently. he was selected as a 2020 Emerging Artist by Cape Cod Art Magazine, for his growing body of Cape Cod seascape paintings. He has exhibited work in New York City, Long Island and his home region of Connecticut.
Jason says, “I work using the medium of oil to capture atmospheric coastal scenes, which aim to capture a sense of space and connection to the New England region that I love. I practice en plein air painting for smaller pieces and often use these as preparatory studies for larger paintings combined with photographs that I take while visiting, before completing the final piece in my studio. Few things make me happier than taking a nice long walk along a beach, hearing the sound of the tide crashing nearby as I explore both physically, then later in my minds eye, the thoughts of my experience back into my painting. I embrace the process of unpacking those memories and calibrating the colors, the shifting light and changing weather elements back in my studio. These variables prompt the type of brush movement; hues and tones I enlist which are often then wrapped under an impressionistic skyline, intending to heighten the mood of my seascape further.”
REBECA FUCHS was born in Madrid, Spain, where she graduated with an MA in Furnishing Design. For almost two decades, she developed a successful career as furniture designer, working and living in Italy, Bali and the US. In the US she attended drawing and painting workshops at the New York Academy of Art and others, and started to combine art and design projects; after motherhood, she decided to channel all her creativity into painting. She has shown her work in several galleries in New York and Connecticut and has won the Juror’s Choice at the New Britain Museum of American Art.
Rebeca says, “I paint to make you notice the beauty around you, beauty from Nature and from human interaction. Above all, I paint to make you feel alive and loved. My landscapes explore the raw, definitional forces of Earth, the geological changes that affect and transform the continents and all life forms. My depictions of wildlife explore how consciousness and intelligence manifest in other life forms. My human subjects are glimpses into the intimate moments when we search for our true self.”
KATE HENDERSON is a visual artist, educator, and Director of Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven. She also currently teaches at Paier College and in workshops around CT. Before being the Director of KLG, she was a Program Director at the Yale School of Medicine, responsible for graphics, bio-imaging, and ITS. Kate received her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University and a BFA in painting and a BA in art history at Indiana University. She has received many awards for her pastels and digital artwork. She has been featured at Creative Tech week NY with the a Lumen Prize as well as in many shows around the New England area.
Kate says, “Painting to me, is about creating a sacred place that uses forms of the natural world and describes the mysticism and the narratives of life. I work between realms of the reactive and the intuitive, nature versus the intellect. Frequent themes in my paintings include feminism, mythology, passages, and memories. I often work by looking for a memory that can’t be put into words, something trapped in our collective experiences. Using a combination of gestural and contour line, I translate elements of the natural world into a place of imagined passages… For me pathways act as a metaphor for passages into the human condition…When walking a path there are choices, forks, crossroads, bridges; transitions of the landscape, going from the light into darkness and out again.”
Volunteers Welcome
Volunteers are welcome to assist in the gallery operation. Tasks include curating exhibits, selecting artists, attending monthly meetings, helping with opening receptions, and other various administrative tasks. Art experience preferred for curating and selecting artists. Please contact Liz Tardif, Gallery Manager, at 203-246-9065.
Click here for information about showing your work in our gallery (.pdf). Information pamphlets are also available at the circulation and reference desks at the library.