Betty Carroll Fuller, Irene Lipton, Michael MacMahon "Invitational" September 14th-October 18th

We are excited to be introducing three well regarded Cape Cod artists to our patrons at Cross Rip Gallery: Betty Carroll Fuller and Michael MacMahon of Falmouth and Irene Lipton of Truro in our Invitational exhibit September 14th-October 18th as part of our season series “Color Connections 2023”. Please join us at our opening reception to welcome these three outstanding artists on Friday, September 15th, 5 pm-7 pm in our outside garden for refreshments and good cheer.

Betty Carroll Fuller received a BA from the University of Maryland, School of Art and Architecture, College Park, MD in 1971. She studied with Joan Snyder in a master painting class in Truro, MA., August 2007. From 2003-2019, she was a professor in the Arts and Communications Department at Cape Cod Community College teaching Painting, Drawing and Visual Fundamentals and is the former Director and Curator of the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College.  

She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Northeast, including the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Her work is in private and corporate collections.

Excerpts from Betty Carroll Fuller’s artist statement:

“I love simple forms, sensitive lines, layers of color, vague space. The fastidiousness of a more formal minimalism escapes me, it’s not in my nature, my life is messy.  I like to see the hand of the artist and provoke personal narratives–tender moments, high anxieties, fragmented time, shifting realities–told with simplicity.  The inaccessible nature of working in an abstract way, letting the materials be part of the decision appeals to me.  The sturdiness and drama of charcoal tells one story, the delicate lines from a 9H pencil, oIls, so buttery and rich…tell others.
Living on the Cape, the colors, geography, atmosphere the various tides, and weather contribute to my visual vocabulary. The Cape is home, a part of who I am, this allows my paintings to be just that: paintings.  I want to strip them of pretense, provide no exacting form. seeing where it all goes, failing often, working it out in my own way, no compromises.  Just painting.  Searching for the unknown, trying to be faithful to the work……”

Irene Lipton received her MFA in painting from Hunter College in NYC. Early in her career, Lipton was chosen by Charlotta Kotik to be in two museum shows, Working in Brooklyn/Painting at the Brooklyn Museum in 1987, and On the Cutting Edge at the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, NY in 1989. She received two consecutive Fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center, from 1988–1990, and later served on the Visual Committee for several years. In 1997, Lipton moved full-time to Provincetown and then to North Truro, where she built a studio and works today. In 2005, she was one of the founding members of artSTRAND gallery, having seven years of solo shows and numerous group exhibitions there, as well as on the Cape and in Boston. Lipton had a mid-career show in 2007 at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Her work has been written about in the Boston Globe, Art New England, and Provincetown Arts magazine.

Excerpts from Irene Lipton’s artist statement:

I have always been moved by the idea of image and meaning developing from random marks and gesture. Arshile Gorky, Adolf Gottlieb, Myron Stout, Peter Busa, Elizabeth Murray, and Bill Jensen were some important early influences.

I initially began by finding a visual language of hieroglyphics—literally finding—through erasure, using graphite on paper. My process went on to involve layers of spontaneous gesture—paint would build and be scraped away, lines creating edges, edges creating shapes, resulting in a complex interplay of multiple elements.

More recently, the focus has been increasingly on the lines themselves and the gesture embedded in them, along with a single unifying figure.

There have always been figural components in the abstraction. These have now become overt, with the feeling of a body, a physical presence, made up of many elements within and without, internal and external, forms nesting, weaving, supporting and connecting.

Gesture is a core force. I begin a painting as I always have, with marks and blocks of color and random shapes. I have slowed the movement of the gesture, of the line, and am aware of every nuance. A black shape begins to form and grow in scale. The edges define the form and separate it. Within what becomes this figure, the movement of my hand drawing white lines starts to create interior shapes and networks of forms. In the weaving of multiple lines, every edge is considered, the slightest shift in weight matters.

The painting finishes when a multi-dimensional building of organism and the ground that contains and supports it feels complete.”

Michael MacMahon:

Was born in Ireland in 1981 and received his Master in Fine Arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA/Tufts University 2012-2014; his Bachelors in Fine Arts. 2010-2012 at The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, MA, with concentrations in painting and drawing. He received his Associates in Liberal Arts. 2000-2002 at the Cape Cod Community College, MA.

Michael MacMacMahon is currently part of the painting Faculty at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, Boston and has exhibited his works widely in the Boston area, Cape Cod and Rhode Island.

A statement about Michael MacMahon’s work:

“Abrupt pairings from the aggregate to Michael MacMahon’s explorations into movement, origin and place. MacMahon utilizes a variety of painting strains while subjecting them to personal systems. Polychromatic grids, methods of communication form a sense of remove with the landscape furthering his long-standing interest in the representation of the American landscape with an exploration of home as proximity, place and state of mind. In combining both geophysical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, MacMahon’s work reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to understanding its past, present and future.”

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