Fran Peppers Featured Artist at the Williams Gallery, Washington and Lee University
Currently showing in the Williams School Gallery in Huntley Hall at Washington and Lee University is an exhibit of oil paintings by Fran R. Peppers. The show’s title is “Life’s Moments” and runs through July 1, 2015. It is free and open to the public.
Her paintings capture individuals in a fleeting moment of light and emotion and convey the poetic mood of the scene. These recent paintings rotate around moments the artist has captured of people doing ordinary, daily activities: a mother and child sharing a quiet moment as evening draws near; a man enjoying a walk by the ocean in the evening; and a young woman pouring cream into an antique pitcher while standing in luxurious sunlight.
“I explore the visual rhythm of light, space, color and shapes in and around the figure in order to project a certain feeling or emotion,” said Peppers. “The wet-on-wet, scumbling and reworking painting technique which I use is excellent for conveying the dynamics of the mood and emotion of people existing in their own particular time frame and environment.”
Using a limited palette of rich, intense pigments, each of her paintings evolves through numerous stages of paint action and destruction before arriving at the point where a final resolution has been achieved. The artist’s strong reaction to color, light and the human figure is evident in her paintings.
Peppers, a long-time resident of Lexington, has curated the Williams School of Commerce art shows since 1989 and the McCarthy Gallery since the fall of 2007. Both galleries are at W&L.
The Williams School Gallery is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
