Barbara Prey’s exhibition Still Light closes for the season on September 4. Join Gallery Manager Sofia Stefani on Sunday, August 27 from 4-5 pm for a special gallery talk. This is a unique opportunity to gain insight and learn more about the individual works on exhibit at Barbara Prey Projects.
Prey, one of America’s most renowned contemporary artists, recently completed a commission by the contemporary art museum MASS MoCA to create the largest known watercolor painting (8 by 15 feet) for their new building. Prey’s work also resides in the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Farnsworth Museum, the Kennedy Space Center, and the permanent collection of the White House, where she is one of just two living female artists represented.
Also on exhibit is a wide selection of limited edition prints and her painting of Port Clyde Ferry Road fresh off a New York museum exhibition at the former Frick mansion Impressionism a World View with artists Degas, Cezanne, Monet, and Cassatt.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Prey is considered one of America’s foremost painters. A living master, her recently completed commission for MASS MoCA, described as a “technical tour de force” by Director Joe Thompson, is the largest watercolor ever exhibited. Her paintings are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Art Museum, the White House, and the Kennedy Space Center, among many other public and private collections.
For the past decade, she has been a member of the National Council for the Arts, the governing body of the National Endowment for the Arts, a position she was appointed to by the President. In 2003 her painting of the Diplomatic Reception Room was featured on the White House Christmas card. With dozens of artworks commissioned by government agencies and institutions, such as four paintings for NASA, Prey is a global ambassador for American Art. Tapped annually for the U.S. Art in Embassies program, Prey’s work has been on display in over one hundred U.S. Embassies and Consulates worldwide, including those in Paris, Hong Kong, and Madrid. Her painting Gallantly Streaming is currently on exhibit in the lobby of the U.S. Mission to the U.N.
Prey earned a Bachelor’s degree from Williams College, where she is an adjunct faculty member and a Master’s degree from Harvard University. She has received numerous institutional accolades, including a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, and the New York Senate’s “Women of Distinction” Award, joining Eleanor Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony.
Her attention to detail recalls Vermeer..it’s a painter’s job to notice, and to draw out the nuance and light in what the rest of us ignore. Prey has that eye and hand… what she makes touches the divine and has staying power. -The Boston Globe
