Chuck Webster  | Paintings 2020

July 7 – August 16, 2021

ARTIST STATEMENT

The paintings here were all made in 2020, when I arrived back at my studio after three months in my apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. Before the lockdown, I had been teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. After 8 hours of class, I’d catch the train and draw all the way home, hundreds of ink drawings on small pieces of antique paper. The forms in these paintings came from that drawing practice.

On March 10, I took home a massive pile of paper and drawing materials, not knowing what would happen. The next three months were stressful, strange, challenging, scary, sad. We sourced PPE, worried, cleaned groceries, baked, gardened, and found ways to get through along with everyone else. My routine was making marks with pastel, crayon gouache and paint. My home studio table piled up with drawing after drawing. I could not stop working. The garden became a gallery.

I came back to the studio in July. These paintings come from that time. They are havens, hearths, ways to be in a safe place in the middle of chaos.

CHUCK WEBSTER
Webster is a recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a 2018 National Academy Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. His work is included in numerous private and public collections, including those of the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.