meet Beverly Rippel | Visual Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Beverly Rippel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Beverly, how does your business help the community?
I am a visual artist who paints to understand my own self/ my thoughts and those of the world around me and who shares what I see with others. Making Art is a basic human response that goes back to the cave paintings of thousands of years ago. I believe that all forms of expression enrich the multiple cultures found globally, and have found that Art holds a necessary and positive place in our human existence.

For years now I have been painting several bodies of work on location in various places – by the sea, in my gardens, and in my studio directly observing found objects in a still life setting. For this interview I am selecting one important body of work about which I am passionate, and one that has been ongoing for nearly 25 years: “Water Pistols, Cap Guns and Targets”. It is the first of many categories on my website.

A bit about this series: “Pink Cap Gun I”, “Orange Cap Gun I”, Yellow and “Blue Cap Guns” Series present monumentally sized toy cap guns and water pistols. These visually ambiguous, jelly colored forms expose themselves with a tactile, seductive allure and are painted with oil paint and sometimes with added shiny pigmented beeswax (encaustic paint). Their transparent plastic exteriors reveal molded inner chambers that are vaulted like miniature cathedrals. I find a dichotomy in the beauty of the paint that describes them while at the same time I explore and question our gun culture and our cultural rituals.

Over the years the paintings have become catalysts for community conversations in galleries, museums, and in my personal Boston studio -especially when one stands next to these huge toy pistols. Because they have been taken out of context, some think the big guns look like real guns. This idea, in turn, provides a “blurred edge” and often provokes deep seeded thoughts and discussions. I like the idea of sharing and listening to others on challenging topics brought about by looking at a painting.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I graduated from the University of Maine with a Major in Fine Arts and a Minor in Anthropology. That’s probably why I am fascinated with toy guns and find them to be society’s cultural icons.
But before painting, Motherhood took center stage. When my sons went off to school, I took graduate courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and began my Painting Practice. During the next 25 years, as my husband and I raised our family, I taught classes in drawing and painting in south of Boston Art Centers to young people and adults from 7 to 90 years including classes in my town’s Council on Aging. Like everyone else, balancing time for painting, teaching, motherhood, family, home/making, and parental eldercare was the challenge, but I believe that each phase brought something to my Art. And I am grateful for all of it.

Through the years I have found a love for the materiality of the paint itself in the various bodies of my work, and believe that my ‘paint language’ can tell a unique story.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would say the East Coast Route 95 corridor from Maine to Boston to NYC offers visual enlightenment with fabulous museums and galleries. There is Maine’s Portland Museum of Art, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The Arts and Design District in SOWA Boston where my studio/gallery is located, MOMA, The Met, The Brooklyn Museum and others in New York. Best restaurant in town is our dining room table.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
A shout out goes to the women artists who have been paving the way to have our visions seen and voices heard. Of the many, Georgia O’Keeffe stands out. Her words encouraged me to take the water pistols off the still life table, hold them up to the light of day, and paint them big. She said, “Nobody sees a flower-really-it is so small- we haven’t time…so I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it…to see what I see.”

I am also grateful to the east coast Art organizations, curators, galleries and museums who have selected my work to be shown in national exhibitions. Many of these paintings have been included at the Portland Museum of Art Biennial (ME), the University of Maine Museum of Art (my Alma Mater), the Attleboro Arts Museum (MA), the Danforth Art Museum (MA), and Violence Transformed of Boston.

A huge “Thank you” goes out to the Cambridge Art Association at their First National Prize Show where the Director Emeritus of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Malcolm Rogers, awarded me his Best in Show from 4500 entries nationally for the painting shown here: “Just Once”, a table setting with toy guns on target place mats.

My loudest shout out goes to my husband, partner and college sweetheart, Ron, who continues to support my artistic journey while raising a family with me. He has also meticulously constructed, mounted and framed many of my works on linen canvas. And he often cooks while I paint!

Website: www.beverlyrippel.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/beverlyrippel

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/beverlyrippel

Image Credits
Robin MacDonald-Foley Steve Gyurina