Berkshire artist Bart Elsbach is one of America’s premiere landscapists. Influenced by the Hudson River School and Dutch Golden Age painting, Elsbach’s beautifully lit works innovate on the Dutch Masters’ romantic Italianate landscape – revealing New England locales in new light. Born in 1961 and raised in Manhattan, Elsbach graduated from The Dalton School and went on to earn his Bachelors degree from Hamilton College. After attending the Art Students’ League of NY, he completed his MFA at New York University. Over the years Elsbach has shown in solo and group exhibitions nationally, and frequently in New England galleries. He also teaches, both through private instruction and at institutions such as the Berkshire School in Sheffield MA and at The Interlaken School of Art in Stockbridge.

Artist Statement:

"Although we seem desperate to distinguish ourselves from nature and hold ourselves removed, we cannot escape the deeper reality that we are a product of nature and tied to her inextricably. The river, as both a physical realty and powerful metaphor, is a limitless source of inspiration and solace. Despite our disrespect and disregard for her, she flows on patiently and powerfully."

-Bart Elsbach

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

1997: Solo Exhibition Wheatleigh, Lenox, MA

1995: Solo Exhibition Canyon Ranch, Lenox, MA

1994: Solo Exhibition Chaiwalla, Sharon, CT

Solo Exhibition Cove Castles, Anguilla, BWI

1993: Solo Exhibition The Carnegie Library, Clarksdale, MS

1991: Solo Exhibition Berkshire Medical Plaza, Great Barrington, MA

1988: Solo Exhibition The Barney Building, New York, NY

Solo Exhibition New York Society of Trading Analysts

Juried Shows:

Springfield Art League 1989, 1988

Sheffield Art League 1999 (Juror), 1992 (Award for Oil Painting), 1990, 1989, 1988

Pittsfield Art League 1988

Kent Art League 1993 (Juror), 1992 (Best in Show, Graphics), 1989, 1988

Commissions:

1996: Interlaken School of Arts

Sheffield Land Trust

Fellowships:

2002: Malilangwe Artists Trust, Zimbabwe

2001: World Views, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Assistantships:

1987, 1986: Lamar Briggs, New York, NY

1987, 1986: Lisa Mackie, New York, NY

1987: Joseph Scorcello, New York, NY

1986: Idelle Weber, New York NY

Since moving from New York to Alford, Massachusetts in 1969, Filmus has continued to paint the enchanted Berkshire landscape. Working in pastels and oils, his drawings and paintings have captured the quiet beauty of these western hills. Filmus studied at the Art Students League in New York and in an apprenticeship with his father, the artist Tully Filmus. His work is in numerous private and public collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Berkshire Museum, The Butler Institute of American Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He has been represented in New York by Hirschl & Adler Galleries and by David Findlay Jr Fine Art. Filmus lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Arden Gallery Ltd., Boston, MA

Atrium Gallery, Simon’s Rock College, Great Barrington, MA

Becket Arts Center, Becket, MA

Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA

David Findlay JR Fine Art, New York, NY

Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA

Harbor Gallery, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY

Sanford Smith Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA

Welles Gallery, Lenox, MA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Art in the Embassies, American Embassy, Rabat, Monaco

Audubon Artists, New York, NY

Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA

David Findlay JR, New York, NY

Graham Gallery, New York, NY

Lauren Clark Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA

Minnesota Museum of Art, MI

Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY

Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Scott Bundy Galleries, Kennebunkport, ME

White Gallery, Lakeville, CT

“My output has taken many forms, from abstract to figurative.The wide-ranging media I have worked with include encaustic painting on wood, mono prints and solar plate etching, sculpture, furniture and woodcarving, and performance art. The unifying threads are the exploration and discovery of nature, one element stimulating another, and the transference of energy and primitive rhythms to all living things. My images tell stories–autobiographical, historical, mythological–and my work progresses today building upon a lifetime of personal experiences. 

Watching the river outside my studio, I imagine the sediment moving beneath the surface. I want to strip away the the layers to expose the magical place where, according to the Argentinian poet-essayist Borges, "past, present, and future space coexist simultaneously"(The Aleph). 

I have enjoyed a vibrant and full art career for 55 years. My work has taken many forms: nationally exhibited artist, teacher of painting, creative collaborator, curator and pioneer in the field of art therapy. At the basis of my work is a passionate lifelong fascination with the natural rhythms of living things, archaeology, science, psychology, mysticism, and literature. I was influenced by Goya, de Kooning, Matisse, Kandinsky, and Diebenkorn, and mentored by the Abstract Expressionists. I work from older, unconscious elements of human experience–the ones that can't be verbalized. I have long admired the magic realism of Argentinian poet-essayist Jorge Lois Borges, the theoretical writings of Carl Jung of gene memory and collective unconscious and all the sacred literature of ancient traditions. All of which finds expression in my work.”

 Harriette Joffe’s 55-year career spans from post-World War II to the present. Embraced by the first generation of Abstract Expressionist painters on the East End of Long Island, she represents one of the last living links to central figures in the avant-garde of 20th-century American art, including such artists as Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Philip Pavia, Ibram Lassaw, John Little and Balcomb Greene. During this period, Joffe had solo exhibitions at Vered Gallery, Elaine Benson Gallery, Bologna Landi Gallery, and showed at Guild Hall Museum, and Ashawagh Hall in the Hamptons. Joffe also worked among the pioneering Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass or DUMBO

artists, finding a voice within the then emerging New York City avant-garde in the mid-to-late 70s. She then broke with many of her contemporaries and began a systematic examination of Renaissance, Classical, and neo-Classical European painting. She subsequently began a long period of exploring ancient American civilizations in Mexico and the Southwest. Now sharing her time between Western Massachusetts and New York, her work has continued to evolve into the 21st century. Harriette Joffe has exhibited nationally in galleries and museums; her work has been published extensively and reviewed in publications across the US. Her contribution to the culture of American Abstract Expressionism is featured in the East Hampton Parrish Museum’s “East End Stories” oral history series.

Northampton-based painter Scott Prior has lived as a working artist in the area since 1971, the year of his graduation from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BFA in printmaking. A founding member of a small cohort of painters known as the “Valley Realists,” Prior is a Contemporary Realist who paints “contemporary Americana” (Ann Wilson Lloyd, Art in America, July 2002) with a style and finesse informed by his admiration for the Flemish and Dutch Masters. One of the many remarkable facets of the artist’s work is the way in which, in the spirit of Luminist influence, Prior casts the emotional tones of each of his scenes with beautiful variations on light. His paintings are not simply reproductions of what he views, but rather each is a vision – a landscape of sentiment with intricate details that beckon contemplation. Scott Prior has shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. His artwork hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Danforth Museum, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Rose Art Museum, and other major public and private collections.

Artist Statement:  

“In New England we live in a world of changing seasons, which, I think, invites an almost sensual awareness of time and its effects. The New England landscape is small and intimate and directs our attention to things close at hand…I learned about making art by studying these things and capturing their surfaces, but always with an awareness that there was something hidden underneath. Although I have never been much of a celebrant of the unconscious I am grateful for the Surrealists’ reminder of the disconnect between objects and their meaning… I have always been fairly comfortable with the isolation and solitude of being an artist. At times I have been described as being detached, but with a sense of humor, of the mordant sort. Like a scientist, I have been an observer, striving to understand things. For many years my paintings were of unpeopled landscapes, tourist places off-season, empty rooms, and still lifes of discordant subject matter. It wasn’t until I saw a lot of Edward Hopper’s paintings in one place that I recognized the significance and emotional power of light. That was thirty years ago, and I am still fascinated by the varied and countless effects of light on the tangible world of my experience.”

Education:

BFA University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

SELECTED COLLECTIONS:

American Express, New York, New York

Berkshire Art Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Boston Public Library

W.C. Bradley Co., Columbus, Georgia

Comptroller of the Currency, Washington, D.C.

Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, Massachusetts

DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts

Fidelity Investments, Boston, Massachusetts

Gardner, Carton and Douglas, Chicago, Illinois

Graham Gund, Cambridge, Massachusetts

IBM, New York, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut

New England Life, Boston, Massachusetts

On Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Ropes & Gray, Boston, Massachusetts

Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York

Texaco, White Planes, New York

Wellington Management, Boston, Massachusetts

Ruth and John D. West Collection, The Rahr-West Art Musuem, Manitowic, Wisconsin

William Brinks Old Hofer Gilson & Loine, Chicago, Illinois

Berkshire-based artist Jim Schantz has been painting the Western Mass landscape since he moved to the area in 1982. Schantz is best known for his staggering land, sea, and skyscapes that frame and share emotion as well as outdoor scenes. His work confronts the viewer with the sublimity of nature. Sometimes subtle and tranquil, sometimes tempestuous, Schantz’s paintings ponder through the depths of human feeling, each eliciting an immediate, almost primal reaction. Although influenced by a Romanticist appreciation for the greatness of nature, and a hint of Fauvist color-boldness, Schantz’s art never capitulates to gloom or agitation. Portraying mood with variations in light, he renders strong emotion, concealing and revealing in turn through careful layers of oil paint, through the coloration of each cloud and the twist of each rivulet. Schantz’s work imparts his vision, instilling in any observer the admiration and reverence for nature that he so tangibly experiences.

Schantz studied at the Hornsey School of Art at the Middlesex Polytechnic Institute in London and Syracuse University in New York, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a BFA in painting (1977). After attending the Brooklyn Museum School and then the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Schantz went on to attain his Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of California – Davis (1981). He has exhibited internationally and throughout the United States. His works can be found in many public collections, including the Berkshire Museum, Center for Spiritual Life at Emerson College, Lowe Art Museum, Syracuse University, the Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts, Nelson Museum, U.C. Davis, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Skidmore College, Simon’s Rock of Bard College, and University of Massachusetts. Schantz’s paintings have been featured in exhibitions at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, the Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, the Albany Institute of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum and the Berkshire Museum.

Education:

1981 Master of Fine Arts, University of California, Davis, CA

1980 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, MA

1978 Brooklyn Museum School, Brooklyn, NY

1977 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Magna Cum Laude, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

1975 Hornsey School of Art, Middlesex Polytechnic Institute, London, England  

SELECTED PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS

Albany Institute of History and Art, NY Arno Maris Gallery, Westfield State College, Westfield, MA Atrium Gallery, Simon’s Rock of Bard College, Great Barrington, MA Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA Binney Art Gallery, Wilbraham and Monson Academy, Wilbraham, MA Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY California State College, Stanislaus, Turlock, CA Fairbanks Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Fuller Museum, Brockton, MA Ghetto Museum Terezin, Terezin, Czech Republic Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis, CA Hayward Arts Center, Hayward, CA Heritage State Park Museum, Holyoke, MA Leighton Studios, Banff Art Centre, Banff Alberta, Canada Lowe Art Museum, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Memorial Union Gallery, University of California, Davis, CA Normal Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA Schenectady Museum, NY Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA Teikyo Post University, Waterbury, CT The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA  University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, WI Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA

Gabrielle Senza is an internationally recognized multi-disciplinary artist whose work is included in the collections of institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA New York, Lifetime Entertainment, JP Morgan Chase and Fidelity Investments, among numerous others, and exhibited in solo and traveling group shows throughout the U.S. and abroad.

 “The terrain I explore through my work - be it installation, video, painting, photography, sculpture, music, dance, or drawing - is guided by intuition, deep listening and the connection to the emotional charge of a place - internal or external. The process aids in guiding my personal journey and surviving the ineffable past."

SELECTED AWARDS/RESIDENCIES/HONORARIA

2017      Artist Residency Fellow, ZK/U Center for Art & Urbanistics, Berlin

2016      Imperceptible Self Social Practice Award, Transart Institute, New York/Berlin 2009  Artist’s Fellowship Grant, Salamagundi Club, New York

2004      A.R.T. (Artist’s Resource Trust) Grant, Berkshire Taconic Foundation 2004  Change, Inc. Artist Grant

2002      The Puffin Foundation, Public Interest Grant for The Online Collaborative Revelations Scroll 2001        Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Kidspace Honorarium

1996Politecnico Associazione Culturale, Rome, Italy

SELECTED PUBLIC & CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Lifetime Entertainment, New York, NY

Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry, Miami, FL JP Morgan Chase, Detroit, MI

Paine Webber, Inc. Hato Rey, Puerto Rico

Richard M. Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH