SUCCESSFUL ART WORKSHOP ENDS

Professor at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Joel Babb of Maine, USA, spent a week here earlier this month facilitating a workshop at the Purple Palace resource centre in Road Town, Tortola.

The January 10th-17th workshop was coordinated by local artist and student of the MFA Mrs. Martha Tattersall, in conjunction with the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College (HLSCC) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

This is the fifth year this workshop is being held in the BVI. It usually attracts about 15 students each year. This year, there were 11 students, including 4 from the BVI and the rest from Boston and the focus was on landscape painting in oils and water colour outside.

Professor Babb is a Princeton graduate, having earned a degree in art history there in 1969. At Princeton, he studied abstract painting with George Ortman, modern sculpture with George Segal and Chinese painting and the concept of modernization during Wen Fong’s course.

Following Princeton, he lived for several months in Munich, where he studied the masterpieces of Northern art and he then moved to Rome. At the end of his year abroad, Mr. Babb returned to the U.S. and entered Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1971, where he earned his MFA in 1974. The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is one of the oldest and most distinguished professional art schools in the U.S.

From 1974 to 1986, he taught painting and drawing through the museum’s education department and since 1986, he has taught a painting course at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Each Saturday, he also teaches realist painting.

Professor Babb is best known for his aerial views of modern Boston his cityscapes. But his repertoire also includes paintings of cypress swamps, urban landscapes and more recently, the forests, rivers and coastal islands of interior Maine.

The Purple Palace is hoping to attract Professor Babb back to the BVI next year to establish an artist in residence programme, where he will study for 4 months at the college level.

Participants in the workshop conducted each year at the Purple Palace are eligible to receive 1 ½ college credits. Artists of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to participate.

“Participants in the workshop were presented with several ideas,” Professor Babb told the Island Sun. “Many people paint from photos or in a studio, but I believe it is important to work on the outside in strong light, where you get a completely difference understanding of the extremes of light.” He said they went through some fundamental concepts, such as atmospheric perspectives, composition, colour harmony and light and shade, in ways beginners or very good painters can understand.

“The workshop allowed everyone to work at their own pace, it’s not necessarily intellectual, it comes from within,” the professor continued. He encouraged everyone to take advantage of these annual workshops put on by the Purple Palace. He said it is a great opportunity for people who live here to be able to study with artists from outside.

The Purple Palace hosted two different workshops in the last two years in portrait painting with Paul Benney, who is also scheduled to return in March. “We really want to have art instruction at a highly qualified professional level available here to the community at large and for College students,” said Mrs. Tattersall.

She said their affiliation to the Museum of Fine Arts, which is one of the best schools in the USA, is setting a standard they hope to maintain locally.