"Florida Allegory" - David Price and Jeff Ripple - Sculpture & Painting Exhibit
The Lake Wales Arts Council is excited to host master sculptor David Price and the 2019 Citizens Bank & Trust Lake Wales Arts Festival “Best In Show” winner Jeff Ripple for their joint-exhibit at the Lake Wales Arts Center on April 16th, 2020. The reception will take place in the Michael Crews Gallery from 6 - 7:30 PM. There will be an open bar and food available to all of our guests. Admission is free to the public. David and Jeff’s art will be available for purchase throughout the duration of his exhibit. Sculptures purchased during the exhibit will be available to take home after the exhibit concludes.
David Price - Sculptor
Through his art, David Price seek to represent the highest human qualities and characteristics; to portray the vitality and dignity of the subject but also to evoke a feeling or an emotion from the viewer. David believes that sculpture is about the masses as well as the voids, what is there and what is not. Emotion is represented in the gesture and flow of his designs. David's mediums of choice are stone and bronze because of their permanence and versatility. Both materials are earth materials that lend warmth and life to the art. Artist that have influenced David include Donald De Lue, Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin. The Arts and Craft movement is an influence to him with its tenets of simple design, inspiration from nature, use of natural materials, and studied mastery of material and technique.
Jeff Ripple - Painter
Artist Statement
I am dedicated to a poetic realism in landscape painting. For me, that is the artistic union of an accurate depiction of a scene infused by my emotional response to the light and atmosphere on that landscape. Such a painting may or may not be of a precise location or moment in time, but it is always believable and true to place. I think this is in keeping with 19thCentury American painter Asher Durand's idea that painting nature was "fraught with high and holy meaning" and the job of landscape artists is to reveal "the deep meaning of the real creation around and within us." Such a painting is probably most fully realized in the studio based on studies of light on land forms, atmosphere, clouds and sky in addition to highly detailed drawings of elements in that landscape, such as trees, rocks, and water. The success of the studio painting depends largely upon the value of the field sketches, and those sketches in turn require a deft ability to quickly identify, draw and paint key elements in the scene. As a painter who lives and primarily works in the South, I find myself constantly faced with the conundrum of needing to accurately draw elements of my surroundings while somehow simplifying the scene to include only what is essential to its true nature.