Jane Deering Gallery opening reception of Jeffrey Marshall | Working the Waterfront Saturday, December 15th, 4:00 — 6:30 pm @ 19 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA

from the release:

“Jeff Marshall’s studio sits above the tide on Smith Cove and overlooks a truck corral down at the Morse Sibley Wharf. It’s where fisherman hitch their workhorses for however long it takes to get the fish from out there to back here. The ancient pilings driven deep into clay centuries ago and sistered to newer stringers form a solid structure. …. Pickup trucks rest on a scrapple of broken asphalt penned-in by rusting cargo containers and dredges laced with Tansy gone to seed. … Decomposing memories of fisheries past – a Gillnet dries on a wooden spool and a stone-age winch is ready to start a new life as a mooring stone. Future fishers will shelter in the lee of their steeds to talk weather, the price of fish and about that new electric pick-up truck, they’re gonna get someday. So now comes Marshall to set himself, easel, paints and tools at the hub of this sometimes milling sometimes solitary station where fishers hitch their warhorses, cast the lines and slip to the fog. He knows the situation and the terrain down the old pier and his subjects know how to hold a pose.”- Ken Riaf 2018 from the catalogue essay of the exhibition Gone …..Fishing
“The contested landscape has been my subject for over a decade, from the post-Katrina neighborhoods of New Orleans to the coastline of Massachusetts. I look for imagery that echoes the complex social and environmental issues of specific places that I love. The subjects I choose are often overlooked, revealed as thematic possibilities only after intense visual research of a site. When I moved into my studio at Morse-Sibley Wharf in East Gloucester in 2016, I spent months drawing as a way of taking inventory of my surroundings, much of which I was lucky enough to view from my windows. This long process of drawing and painting from observation has allowed me to focus on what seems to drive the work, friendships, family, and struggles of the fishermen and lobstermen who show up to this place every day.” — Jeffrey Marshall 2018

About the artist

Jeffrey Marshall has a BFA from Cornell University and and MFA in painting and printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art. He is a lifelong educator, most recently an Associate Professor of Art Foundation at Mount Ida College in Newton, MA. Previously he was Associate Professor of Graphic Design at The New England Institute of Art. His teaching career started with Teach for America in New Orleans, where he taught elementary school. His drawings and paintings have been shown in many national venues, including the Cape Ann Museum, Aspen Museum of Art, The University of Rhode Island, The Boston Center for the Arts, and Endicott College among many others. His New Orleans Drawing Project, a 10-year document of the city’s post-Katrina Recovery, was featured in The New York Times, Art New England and Artscope Magazine. The artist lives/works in Gloucester MA; he maintains a studio on Morse-Sibley Wharf.

Jane Deering Gallery, 19 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA
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