Barges, Tugs and Tankers
Oil on panel, 12" x 18", 2020
Artist: Ellen Kozak

I grew up near water, learning to swim at an early age in the nearby Long Island Sound and on family vacations in Maine. Since 1994 I've had a studio on the Hudson River in Greene County. Painting on a field easel at the river's edge puts me in close physical contact with my surroundings.

While the Hudson and other bodies of water are my subject, I also depend upon them to perform a practical role. I use a river's reflective surface as a giant watery lens, an intermediary device for indirectly observing the world above. Like a lens, the surface of a river can assimilate reflection, color, and pattern. It collects activity from the sky above, the movements of clouds, fog, foliage, planes in flight, and on the Hudson, barges that transport hazardous material.

In recent years, the escalation in commercial traffic on the Hudson is overwhelming as the river is reindustrialized. Ironically, from my studio, the passing barges, tugs, and tankers are particularly stunning at night when the reflected lights from these vessels illuminate the river. The drama of these nighttime scenes in combination with moonlight and atmospheric conditions inspired me to begin a series of night paintings in March 2020 when the Covid lockdown kept us in place. There are now more than thirty paintings in my series. Most of these are in my current solo exhibition, Vigil: New Paintings, at the David Richard Gallery in NYC from November 27 - December 23, 2021.

This painting is one of the first that I painted. While my paintings offer neither views nor realistic representation of elements in the landscape, I hope that the authority and experience of close observation and empirical practice is evident and tangible.

Ellen Kozak was born in Queens in 1955 and received her Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT's, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, where after graduation she continued as a Center Fellow. She received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. Between the years 1982 and 1984 Kozak worked in Japan and studied shod? (traditional Japanese calligraphy).

Ellen has had twenty solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in the US and abroad including the Hudson River Museum, Katonah Museum of Art, Osaka Contemporary Art Center, Osaka, Japan, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan, Elizabeth Harris and Katarina Rich Perlow Galleries in NYC, Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY. She has participated in group shows held at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art; Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery, NYC; ODETTA Gallery, Brooklyn; Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY; Albany Museum of History and Art; Hyde Collection and La Nuit de l'Instant-2017, Marseille, France.

Her artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hudson River Museum, Museum of Fine Art Boston, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum and Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art.

Ellen's art has been written about and reproduced in Art in America, The New Yorker, Art & Antiques, Art New England, the New York Times, Two Coats of Paint, Painting Perceptions, Hyperallergic, Blue Mountain Commons, and "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes: Notations on a River."

She has taught at Pratt Institute, Princeton University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago at Oxbow, University of Massachusetts, and Art New England at Bennington College.

Ellen works onsite from direct observation and empirical experience beside the Hudson River. She has also had residencies beside the Garonne River in France. She lives in NYC and New Baltimore, NY. Ellen is currently represented by David Richard Gallery.

Striped Bass
Artist's Proof Signed Print, 36" wide
Artist: James Prosek

Artist, writer, naturalist, and Yale graduate James Prosek made his authorial debut at nineteen years of age with "Trout: an Illustrated History" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), which featured seventy of his watercolor paintings of the trout of North America.

James' work has been shown at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery among other institutions. He has written for The New York Times and National Geographic Magazine and won a Peabody Award in 2003 for his documentary about traveling through England in the footsteps of Izaak Walton, the seventeenth-century author of "The Compleat Angler."

James co-founded a conservation initiative called World Trout in 2004 with Yvon Chouinard, the owner of Patagonia clothing company, which raises money for coldwater habitat conservation through the sale of T-shirts featuring trout paintings.

James is on the board of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, serves on the Leadership Council for Riverkeeper and is a member of the advisory board of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies.

troutsite.com

Sunset Housatonic Bend
Oil on Linen, 14"x14", Framed
Artist: Jim Schantz

Jim Schantz received his Master's Degree in Painting at University of California, Davis and his Bachelor's in Fine Arts at Syracuse University. He also studied at The Hornsey School of Art, London and at the Skowhegan School in Maine.

Jim's works are in numerous public collections, including: The Berkshire Museum, The Center for Spiritual Life at Emerson College; Lowe Art Museum, Syracuse University; The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury MA; Nelson Museum, U.C. Davis; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Skidmore College; Simon's Rock of Bard College, and University of Massachusetts. Jim has had several solo exhibitions at Pucker Gallery in Boston. His work has also been featured in exhibitions at the Berkshire Museum, The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, The Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, The Albany Institute of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Jim is represented by the Pucker Gallery in Boston and currently resides in Glendale, MA.

Jimschantz.com

Original Custom Watercolor Painting by artist and award-winning illustrator Elisha Cooper

Caldecott honor winning illustrator Elisha Cooper will paint an original commissioned piece of art work for the winner of this auction lot. Working from a photograph of your choosing, Elisha will create a one-of-a-kind work of art of your favorite place or scene - your favorite Hudson River vista, your lake home, your favorite tree, or any view you would like to capture in art. Elisha's stunning watercolors will transform a place that is close to your heart from a photo to a beautiful custom painting for you to treasure for years to come.

Elisha Cooper received a Caldecott Honor in 2018 for "Big Cat, Little Cat," and his following book "River" won the 2020 Robin Smith Picture Book Prize. One of his earlier books, "Dance!," was a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year, and "Beach" won the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. In 2016 he was awarded a Sendak Fellowship.

After playing football at Yale, where he majored in History, Elisha worked at The New Yorker Magazine. He published his first book, a sketchbook of New York, then followed his wife on her academic trajectory to California, then Chicago, before returning to New York, where she is a professor at NYU. He has written twenty-five books, mostly for children, and also books for adults including the family memoirs "Crawling: A Father's First Year," and "Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back." His essays and sketchbooks have appeared in the sports section of The New York Times. Cooper lives with his wife, daughters, and cats in New York City.

The winner of this item will be connected with Elisha following the auction to set up the artwork consultation.

elishacooper.com
Instagram: @elisha_cooper

Hudson Valley
Oil painting on mixed media paper, 18" x 24", 2021
Artist: Mac O'Sullivan

Mac O'Sullivan is an artist originally from Cornwall, NY in the Hudson Valley - now living and working in New York City. His works include abstracts, portraits, and landscape scenes from his life. He uses oil paint as hi main medium but has worked with several mediums including drawing and digital painting, using color and composition to convey feeling. Mac attributes his personal style to a lack of formal training in painting and years of self-exploration. All profits from artwork sold by Mac O'Sullivan are donated to Riverkeeper to help preserve the Hudson River, a staple of his childhood and the history of New York State.

This piece is based on two different Hudson Valley views - a view from Storm King Mountain and a view from the Bear Mountain bridge - both featuring the Hudson River. It seeks to convey the paradisal calmness Mac feels on a trip back home to the Hudson Valley.

macosullivan.com
Instagram: @mac_osullivan

Ashokan Fugues - Dawn
Watercolor, color pencils on paper, 14" x 28", 2013
Includes a copy of her book: Margaret Cogswell: RIVER FUGUES
Artist: Margaret Cogswell

Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in West Shokan, New York. Cogswell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2009, Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017, 1991, 1987) the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007, 1993); and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Emergency Grant (2014).

Since 2003, the main focus of Margaret Cogswell's work is an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES is a series of projects that explore the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. All River Fugues entail regional research, recording images and narratives with video and audio which are later edited into fugues and integrated into mixed-media installations. Research / video road trips, and long walks follow rivers tracing memories and loss in the landscapes they cut through. These landscapes of haunting histories are filled with conflicting memories of hope, beauty, violence, destruction and loss.

A parallel body of explorations include works on paper. These are the result of many months of walking, exploring, photographing, and filming the landscape of an area being researched for the development of each of the River Fugues projects. Much like an archaeologist or geologist, Cogswell searches for clues to the history of a river, a people, or a place in the enigmatic remnants of their past. Often poignant elegies, both the mixed media installations and works on paper reflect the complex and changing relationship of a society to its industries and rivers and strive to be a contributing artistic voice in larger conversations addressing issues related to water.

RIVER FUGUES projects have been commissioned by museums and art centers for exhibitions nationally and internationally. Some of these projects include Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues, a solo exhibition first shown at the CUE Art Foundation in NYC (2014), and later exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock, NY, July/August 2016, the Art Lab at Columbus State University, GA (2018), the Madelon Powers Gallery at East Stroudsburg University (2019). Other exhibitions include: Soundings: Margaret Cogswell and Ellen Driscoll at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY (2-person, 2015); Water Soundings, Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Museum, China (solo 2014); Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues and Wyoming River Fugues at CUE Art Foundation, NYC (solo 2014); Wyoming River Fugues at the Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie (solo 2012); Mississippi River Fugues, Art Museum, University of Memphis, Tennessee (solo 2008); Hudson River Fugues at Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, (group 2009-2010); River Fugues at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, Monaco Ministry of Culture and Chicago Field Museum (traveling group exhibition, 2007-09); Buffalo River Fugues at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY (solo 2006); Hudson Weather Fugues at Wave Hill, NYC (group 2005), and Cuyahoga Fugues at SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio (solo 2012 and 2003).

margaretcogswell.net

Ashokan Dreams #4
Acrylic on Canvas, 10" x 10", 2020
Artist: Deborah Freedman

Deborah Freedman is a painter and printmaker whose work is deeply informed by nature. She makes suites of varying images of the Ashokan Reservoir and the Hudson River Valley. Her inner eye and skill in etching, monotype, and oil painting captures both the physical and emotional transformation of her subject.

After 9/11 the reservoir became almost inaccessible. What had once been an idyllic scene suddenly became threatened and "disturbed." Freedman's work, though historically abstract, became less homage to the natural world and more a protest about the potential dangers of environmental and political disaster. The titles of her work: Good Night Irene, Every Breaking Wave, With or Without You, and Disturbed Landscapes refer to these concerns. She made a series of paintings titled A BETTER WORLD following the death of her beloved husband, the 2016 election, the ravages gun violence and increased climate disasters.

"Within these dynamic, often tilted compositions, where water surges and froths and mountains shift in tectonic scale-the artist finds great solace and an immeasurable serenity, which pervade our sensibilities too, as visitors to her dramatic landscapes." Susan Eley, Susan Eley Fine Art, Hudson, NY.

Selected list of collections: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, Rutgers University, The Department of State, the Library of Congress, IPCNY, The Hess Collection, CITI, Morgan Guarantee Trust, MSK Hospital, and Montefiore Hospital. For an extended resume, visit her website.

Deborah began her association with printmaking with Bob Blackburn at N.Y.U. and continued at his studio in 1987 as a guest artist. She is a co-founder with Marjorie VanDyke of VanDeb Editions, a printmaking studio dedicated to collaborating with artists to experiment with intaglio and monotype and provide art lovers with affordable, handmade works of art.

deborahfreedman.com
vandeb.com
Instagram: @debpaint