Faculty Art Show!

How wonderful it must be to be a Ranney student, to travel up through the grades and the divisions, and discover what each of the art teachers can offer you on your creative journey. Ranney School is hosting a faculty art exhibit, now on display in Panther Hall Gallery. The exhibit highlights our own creative styles and reminds students that we are all working artists as well as your art teachers.



My paintings in this art exhibit reflect my own personal creative journey, how I learned how to observe and record my unique vision of reality. When I am immersed in a project, I always have to remind myself to step back every now and then and look at what I have been creating from a different perspective. It might simply be that I have to walk away from a painting and look at it with fresh eyes the next day. Sometimes I take a photo of the canvas with my phone or iPad and see how it looks on a small screen as opposed to real life. Does something need to be a different color? Do my eyes focus on what I want everyone else to notice?  I have learned something from each one that I not only bring as a skill to my next painting, but it becomes something I can share with my students at school. My art classes have never been taught out of a textbook, but out of my own experience as an artist. I am inspired by my students, and hopefully I inspire them. It is vital to me to be a working artist and so important for them.

Having my work on display at school also allows me see my work through the wide eyes of my students who could not believe I painted the adorable beagle or the larger-than-life tennis ball. This opportunity to observe my work from a different viewpoint is just like stepping away from the canvas and taking a look with fresh eyes on a new day. I am, once again, excited to begin a new canvas at home and see what creative ideas I can discover this time!

Please come to school and enjoy the work up in Panther Hall Gallery, now through the middle of next week. From the Middle School, you can also see the detailed architectural studies and wonderful ceramic pieces created by Mrs. McCarthy. In the Upper School, Mrs Shipley's intricate data drawings invite you to step up close and examine the beautiful designs that her visual path of information creates on her canvases. Mr. Sullivan, our new Upper School art teacher, has shared with us his expansive landscapes that seem to be as flat as the canvas they are painted on, but at the same time so full of dimension and space. Those students lucky to have Mrs. Greenberg can see her paper cast images. She gets you to notice the shape of objects in a new light, and her own analysis of her work is quite personal and inspiring. As artists, we complement each other in our department and we bring an amazing breath of knowledge and experience to our students.