THE PORTRAIT: HISTORIES, MYTHS, AND ALLEGORIES
Steve Prince, LEWIS COHEN, Oleg Dou, Jeffrey Whittle, Billy Martin, Lee Matney, Jill Carnes, Jadea Knight, Nicole Santiago, Brian Kreydatus, Ivan Plusch, Olga Tobreluts, Christi Harris, Bob Krueger, Brittainy Lauback, Kristen Peyton, George Papadakis, BRIAN FREER, Chris wagner and others
September 14 - December 1, 2024
MATNEY GALLERY, 5435 RICHMOND RD, WILLIAMSBURG (BEHIND CAROLINA FURNITURE), CONTACT THE GALLERY.
Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and he currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William and Mary. Prince received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana and his MFA in Printmaking and Sculpture from Michigan State University. Prince is a mixed media artist, master printmaker, lecturer, educator, and art evangelist. He has taught middle school, high school, community college, 4-year public, and 4-year private, and has conducted workshops internationally in various media.
He has worked with several churches of various denominations across the nation spreading a message of hope and renewal philosophically rooted in the cathartic nature of the Jazz Funerary tradition of New Orleans. To Prince, art media is like languages to a linguist as he adeptly tithers between two-dimensional and three-dimensional artistic practices while working with virtually every age bracket and multiple ethnicities. He is represented by Eyekons Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Black Art in America in Columbus, Georgia, and Zucot Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. Prince has created several public works including an 8’ x 8’ mixed media work titled “Lemonade: A Picture of America” at William and Mary commemorating the first 3 African American resident students in 1967 at the college, a 15’ stainless steel kinetic sculpture titled “Song for John” located in Hampton, Virginia and a 4’ x 32’ communal woodcut titled, “Links,” commemorating the 400thanniversary of 1619 and the first documented Africans at Point Comfort (Hampton, Virginia.)
Prince has received several honors for his art and scholarship including the 2010 Teacher of the Year award from the City of Hampton and he is a 2020 recipient of a VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) Grant. Prince has shown his art internationally in various solo, group, and juried exhibitions. He has participated in several residencies including Artist in Residence at Segura Arts Center at Notre Dame University, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland, the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, and the University of Iowa to name a few.
Jill Carnes’ work has been shown in diverse locales including Athens, Asheville, Atlanta, Austin, and New York City and in exhibitions alongside Lonnie Holley, Thornton Dial, Clementine Hunter, Bill Traylor, Howard Finster, Mose Tolliver and Jimmy Lee Sudduth. Jill Carnes' artistry is a vibrant tapestry of color, pattern, and innovation. Her paintings and drawings have adorned the album covers of bands such as Neutral Milk Hotel and cd inserts for projects featuring R.E.M., Indigo Girls, Madonna, Vic Chesnutt, Victoria Williams, Pearl Jam, Garbage, Kristen Hersch, Soul Asylum and Hootie and the Blowfish. Her work has been exhibited in the Georgia Museum of Art in association with the Elephant Six Collective, a group of American musicians that gave rise to numerous prominent indie bands of the 1990s, including the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, of Montreal, and Circulatory System. Her contributions have also been featured in esteemed publications like Rolling Stone and Creem and projects for Sony Music. Jill’s talents extend beyond visual art; she also captivates audiences musically as Thimble Circus, incorporating whimsical instruments like the toy piano and trombone kazoo into her performances. Michael Stipe included Jill’s name in an art piece in his 2021 book of photography.
Lee Matney, Richard, Photograph, 2001
Lee Matney, born in Richmond VA, is the owner and curator of Linda Matney Fine Art Gallery in Williamsburg, VA, a contemporary art gallery, which opened in October 2010. Lee named the gallery after his mother, Linda, who passed away in 2001 after a courageous battle with breast cancer. Lee is also a practicing fine art photographer and multimedia artist who has exhibited his work in the United States and Europe. He began as a street photographer and became associated with experimental art spaces in Athens, GA while attending University of Georgia. Assisting and collaborating with other contemporary artists, writers, and musicologists, he immersed himself in the art and culture of North Georgia which continues to figure prominently in projects at the gallery.
Lee Matney, Jeremy Ayers, Photograph, 1994
INTRODUCING OLEG DOU
Discovered in 2006 by Liza Fetissova, Oleg Dou is represented today by galleries in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Russia, and the United States. His work has been published in many international reviews. He is one of the most promising artists of his generation. In 2011, the Artprice company, a leader in information on art value, graded Oleg Dou in the top 3 of the under-30-year-old photographers the best sold in public auctions.
IVAN PLUSCH
Ivan Plusch (born in 1981) is a young artist from the rising Russian scene, part of the Nepokorennie group (“The Unconquered”) based in St. Petersburg. He studied in various art schools, such as the State Academy of Art and Design, the Roerich Art School and the PRO ARTE Institute. Ivan Plusch is part of a generation of artists who were still children at the time of the fall of the USSR; consequently, he was marked by these sudden sociological and economic changes in the early 90s. His work bears the marks of these changes, from dearly regained freedom of speech to the people and their relationship with society, whether it is of alienation or of liberation. However, Plusch’s work goes further than mere sociological observation. He reinterprets the art history and tackles the norms of social realism–in particular those of monumental sculpture—and integrates them into his paintings. Comfortable with all mediums, working with sculpture as well as painting, Ivan Plusch is a diverse artist delivering work that fits thoughtfully within Post-Soviet art. Playing with the image of a happy future but from elements of the former communist regime, Plusch questions, the relationship between man and his environment. READ MORE
INTRODUCING JADEA KNIGHT
JADEA KNIGHT (b. 1997) is a multi- disciplinary artist born and raised in VIRGINIA. Through visual mediums such as MOTION PICTURE and FILM PHOTOGRAPHY, she highlights experiences that connect with her most.
“There has never been anything or anyone that has understood me the way that images do. Basic aspects of the human experience such as words, emotions, and relationships have always felt elusive to me. Discovering my voice within the fluency of film and photography has been a profound journey of self-exploration. In my work, the interaction of identity and transformation serves as my central muse. Fueling my creative passion is the need for black women to continue to narrate and reclaim their own stories and experiences.”
Ongoing exhibition in Newport News via Contemporary Arts Network :
To A Familiar Stranger Exhibition 08/17-09/17
*Location: 701 Mariners Row, Newport News VA (Suite 112)*
Tues-Thurs 10-4pm
Fri & Sat 12-6pm
JEFFREY WHITTLE’S PORTRAIT OF JEREMY AYERS WILL BE UNVEILED IN THE PORTRAIT: HISTORIES, MYTHS, AND ALLEGORIES OPENING SEPTEMBER 14
Jeffrey Whittle is a figurative painter living in Athens, Georgia. His mediums include oil on panel/canvas and mixed media. Whittle’s recent paintings explore beauty, love, and an expansive sense of time, By juxtaposing the ephemeral (flowering plants) with the infinite (star-scapes) my desire is to represent of both day time and night time simultaneously as well as the eternal/fleeting temporal experience.
He received his MFA in Painting from Cornell University and his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He has been the recipient of numerous artist’s grants, residencies, and awards. Jeffrey Whittle teaches studio art courses at the University of Georgia and has a long association with Italy and coastal Maine.
Pictured: Jeffrey Whittle in his Studio by Dennis Harper
INTRODUCING FRANK RODICK
Born to a family of booksellers in Montreal, Frank Rodick’s photo-based work engages the worlds of acute subjectivity and emotion. Coming from the intimacies of his life, the issues are elemental and primal: fear, mortality, and pain, as seen through the lens of memory and the subconscious, images manifested in expressionistic representations of the human face and figure. Spanning 30 years, he has plied the photographic medium in his own singular way, integrating analogue and digital photography with film and video, and drawing inspiration from multiple art forms, particularly painting, literature, and cinema.
Rodick’s work sits in permanent collections of numerous public institutions across the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Brooklyn Museum, Buenos Aires Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University, Denmark's Brandts Museum, and others.
BRITTAINY LAUBACK
Not unlike the moment a cry gives way to a laugh, Brittainy Lauback’s work reflects the
emotionally chaotic reality that we experience daily. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the University of Georgia. Her work has been featured in the traveling exhibition, Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund, Looking Male, at the La Grange Museum of Art and Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus GA, and New Southern Photography at the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans.Her first Monograph Infinite Bonheur was published in 2023 by Fall Line Press. She currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. READ MORE
Nicole M. Santiago holds a BFA in studio art from Indiana University and an MFA in painting from the University of New Hampshire. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the College of William and Mary, where she teaches life drawing, drawing, color theory, and 2D design. Santiago exhibits widely. She has shown in well over 100 group and solo exhibitions during her career. She is a member of Zeuxis and affiliated with First Street Gallery (New York, NY), where she shows often. Her works have been included in many art publications including The Artist’s Magazine, Art New England, INPA (International Painting Annual), and Fine Art Connoisseur. READ MORE
IVAN PLUSCH
Ivan Plusch (born in 1981) is a young artist from the rising Russian scene, part of the Nepokorennie group (“The Unconquered”) based in St. Petersburg. He studied in various art schools, such as the State Academy of Art and Design, the Roerich Art School and the PRO ARTE Institute. Ivan Plusch is part of a generation of artists who were still children at the time of the fall of the USSR; consequently, he was marked by these sudden sociological and economic changes in the early 90s. His work bears the marks of these changes, from dearly regained freedom of speech to the people and their relationship with society, whether it is of alienation or of liberation. However, Plusch’s work goes further than mere sociological observation. He reinterprets the art history and tackles the norms of social realism–in particular those of monumental sculpture—and integrates them into his paintings. Comfortable with all mediums, working with sculpture as well as painting, Ivan Plusch is a diverse artist delivering work that fits thoughtfully within Post-Soviet art. Playing with the image of a happy future but from elements of the former communist regime, Plusch questions, the relationship between man and his environment. READ MORE
OLGA TOBRELUTS
Born in 1970 in Murino, Leningrad Oblast, Russia, Olga Tobreluts now lives in St. Petersburg and has studios also in Berlin, Germany and San Tagliamento, Italy. An accomplished artist who works with photography,
video, painting and sculpture, Olga she is a pioneer of digital art movement in Russia and has belonged to the Neo-Academism group of artists in St. Petersburg since 1994. Olga has had numerous solo museum exhibitions throughout the world, including in Belgium, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Singapore. Moreover, Tobreluts has shown with American favorites like Tony Oursler and Cindy Sherman, in addition to countless other well known
international artists. READ MORE
BILLY MARTIN
Artist statement. I make modern mixed media photographic images of pop culture.by a means of simplfied forms and techniques which allows the viewer to digest the complexity of the image. Hopefully the photographic narrative challenges the way the work is perceived.
Billy Martin, 2024
BRIAN KREYDATUS
Brian Kreydatus received his BFA from Syracuse University and his MFA from University of Pennsylvania.
Kreydatus’ paintings, prints, and drawings focus on the figure or, on occasion, a space permeated with the figure’s heavy absence. He states, “my work is about grappling with the physicality and vulnerability of the human body and allusions to the varied life experiences and limitations that are inherent in the human condition. In my purely observational works, I want to make the familiar unfamiliar through the intense scrutiny of looking. I want my narrative works to have the heightened intensity of a fever dream”.
Professor Kreydatus has exhibited his work extensively in the US and abroad with solo exhibitions in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington DC and group exhibitions in New York, Australia, England, China, France, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Serbia, and Sweden. READ MORE
GLENN SHEPARD
Glenn H. Shepard Jr. was raised in the Tidewater area of Virginia. He and John Lee Matney struck up a friendship in second grade, and since high school they have shared a passion for photography. Glenn is an ethnobotanist, medical anthropologist and film maker, and obtained his Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. READ MORE
REBECCA SHKEYROV
Rebecca Shkeyrov is an artist who discovers vibrant colors and geometric structures in figures and spaces. Using a formalist approach to image-making, she explores surreal narratives, self-identity, and personal relationships in her work. READ MORE
BENJAMIN ROUSE
Benjamin Rouse is an American artist known for his works exploring entropy, pressure, and personal acceptance. Inspired by the recurring cycles of life and nature, Rouse creates dreamlike photographs through analog techniques and experiments in blind embossing.
Although they appear dissimilar on the surface, in many ways they are the same. A photograph captures a moment with light, whereas embossing captures a moment with pressure. His work articulates emotions that are universally shared but often difficult to verbalize.
Rouse, a self-taught artist, currently works from his home studio in Athens Georgia. READ MORE
MANDY BEALER
KRISTEN PEYTON
Kristen Peyton is a painter and printmaker working from observation and invention. She earned a Masters of Fine Art in Painting from the University of New Hampshire in May of 2017 and a Bachelor of Arts from the College of William and Mary in 2012. Kristen is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a resident of Richmond, Virginia. She is the Director and Curator of the Flippo Gallery at Randolph-Macon College and an adjunct professor of studio art at Randolph-Macon and William and Mary. READ MORE
GEORGE PAPADAKIS
VIEW GEORGE PAPADAKIS’ WEBSITE
As a kid in New Jersey, I remember trying to draw my favorite Matchbox toy, a 1973 Lesney jet. It was bright yellow with an electric blue windshield. I couldn't get it, and I was so frustrated. I wanted so much to transfer that beautiful three-dimensional jet to my two-dimensional paper. This was the beginning of my lifelong fascination with drawing and painting—the captivating challenge of capturing a likeness. By high school in Yorktown, Va., I was already getting commissions to draw portraits for friends. I majored in fine art at Longwood University and just kept practicing drawing, shading, and coloring. That was it for me; I can’t imagine doing anything else.
LEWIS COHEN
CHRIS WAGNER
BRIAN FREER
VIEW MORE WORKS FROM THE PORTRAIT: HISTORIES, MYTHS, AND ALLEGORIES
Synesthesia
Location:
SATÉ, A New American Experience
694 Town Center Drive, Newport News, VA 23606
Phone number
(757) 330-2299
Psychological Landscapes Revisited
Often calling to mind stills from 1920s-era cinema, Matney's photos capture the figure in various states of contortion and relaxation, creating an illusion of continued motion. READ MORE
A FOCUS ON VIRTUAL EXHIBITS
Show
Smoke Screen
September 26 – November 27, 2023
Presented by Matney Gallery
Press Release
"Smoke Screen", Rob Carter's exhibition in Richmond, Virginia, was predominantly made up of photography. The city is home of Altria parent company of Phillip Morris USA, and Virginia owes its existence to Nicotiana Tabacum, a remarkable plant that continues to plague and pleasure humans all over the world. The success of tobacco has been maintained by obfuscation regarding the health impacts on users, but even as we peer through the smoke, nicotine remains an irresistible commercial product. The exhibited photographs capture the story of tobacco from seed to cigarette as an allegory for our addiction to fossil fuels, and the political and marketing tactics employed by multinationals who keep us hooked on their suicidal products. The exhibition explored the ironic absurdity of society’s apparent death wish, the beauty and grandeur of bright leaf tobacco plants, and the beguiling quality of smoke. VIEW EXHIBITION
Eva Series: Mark Miltz
September 30 – November 30, 2023
Presented by Matney Gallery
Press Release
This series of works features the integration of Japanese pop cultural images (anime) into traditional western fine art objects. The pieces rely on both the contrasts inherent in the disparate source materials and the interplay between these contrasting cultural symbol systems for their content. In effect, the works are translations. They attempt to emphasize a commonality of experience through the mediation of the native symbol systems of the viewers, whether western or Japanese. By using Japanese elements in western motifs, I am exploring the ways in which the assimilation of content is affected by its form.
The works overall deal with universal issues of love, alienation, sacrifice, and the crucible of adolescence by using that most universal of images, the human body. The body (often at life size) facilitates a metaphysical link between individual viewer and art.
Sandra-Lee Phipps, Orchard Breath, (Rubus 2) from “Her Name is Vincent” series, 2019, Archival Pigment Print From unique Lumen photogram, 20 × 15 143/200 in | 50.8 × 39.9 cm. VIEW ON ARTSY
SANDRA-LEE PHIPPS LESSONS IN SURVIVAL VIEWING ROOM
Lesson in Survival Buried memories do strange things to confidence and creativity. The energy spent in survival mode darkens the palette, clouds vision. To counterbalance the weight of a season of heavy news and challenging life events, I began a personal project that evolved to be a study of light and the body. This work represents a challenge to the darkness of past experiences, buried thoughts.
Sandra-Lee Phipps, Beauchamp from Lessons in Survival Series, Isabel, 2019 VIEW EXHIBITION ON ARTSY
Brittainy Lauback, Mello Yello, 2012, 24 × 20 in | 61 × 50.8 cm, Edition of 15. VIEW WORKS ON ARTSY
INTRODUCING BRITTAINY LAUBACK
Not unlike the moment a cry gives way to a laugh, Brittainy Lauback’s work reflects the
emotionally chaotic reality that we experience daily. She received her BFA from the University
of New Mexico and her MFA from University of Georgia. Her work has been featured in the
traveling exhibition, Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do
Good Fund, Looking Male, at the La Grange Museum of Art and Bo Bartlett Center in
Columbus GA, and New Southern Photography at the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans.
Her first Monograph Infinite Bonheur is set to be published in 2023 by Fall Line Press. She
currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. READ MORE
FEATURED PROJECTS 2022
Three Excellences of Culture: Painting, Poetry and Music, the Work of Art Rosenbaum and Friends
Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, Spring Texas
CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION
This fall the Pearl is proud to present, in cooperation with the Linda Matney Gallery in Virginia, a colorful exhibition featuring the narrative painter Art Rosenbaum; his wife, professional photographer Margo Newmark Rosenbaum; and the friends and former students they met along the way. The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, September 24.
Art Rosenbaum paints images of Southern folklore in richly colored canvases that depict lively figures often dancing or holding musical instruments. After moving to Georgia, Art and Margo met musicians such as Ring Shouters on the Georgia coast, banjo and fiddle players in the mountains, faith-filled singers in African American churches, and old-school blues players. These musicians made their way into Art’s paintings as well as Margo’s photographs. “
A typical Rosenbaum canvas is fairly teeming with figures, many of them specific portraits, often including the artist himself,” writes painter Philip Morsberger. “Elements of landscape, of architecture, of still life (often musical instruments): all are presented in rich detail, but at the same time with bold and fearless brushwork. There is no dead space in a Rosenbaum painting. Something is going on everywhere one looks.”
Rosenbaum’s paintings are in many collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art. He also plays a variety of folk instruments, and his music will be part of the exhibition at the Pearl. Rosenbaum’s boxed set, Art of Field Recording Vol. 1: Fifty Years of American Traditional Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum won a Grammy for Best Documentary Recording in 2008.
Margo Newmark Rosenbaum has collaborated with Art over many years in documenting American traditional music. Her photographs have been published in several books by Art Rosenbaum as well as the New York Times, Newsweek, and The Old-Time Herald. Margo’s work has been widely exhibited and is part of many private collections.
Three Excellences of Culture will be featured in both the Main Gallery and the Cole Gallery at the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts this fall. Among the other artists whose work will be included are Howard Finster, who designed album covers for R.E.M. and the B-52’s; Len Jenkin, whose work includes scripts for Family, The Incredible Hulk, and the novel New Jerusalem; Michael Paxton, Bonnie Loggins, Dennis Harper, Kent Knowles, Scott Belville, Dilmus Hall. Zuzka Vaclavik, and Teddy Johnson.
The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, September 24 with a members-only preview on Friday evening. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and admission is free. Please note that the Pearl will be closed September 4 – 23 for the exhibition change.
For more information, visit pearlmfa.org.
Events
About
The Linda Matney Gallery is a Curator-driven art space in Williamsburg, Virginia. The gallery was founded by John Lee Matney to exhibit innovative and emerging artwork from both national and international artists and works by students and professors associated with top universities. With a focus on painting, photography, installation, video, sculpture, and performance art, the Linda Matney Gallery provides a unique opportunity for patrons to view some of the most significant pieces being created today.
The Linda Matney Gallery is a contemporary art gallery founded in honor of Linda Matney, who lost her battle with cancer in 2001. The gallery specializes in curating services for museum exhibitions and art collections, notably Southern figurative art and photography. We are exclusive agents in Virginia of the deeper catalogs of select contemporary artists, which we showcase in special previews of new and newly available work at our exhibitions. Our mission is to promote research-based contemporary art and support artists while providing quality art collecting experiences for our patrons.
