FATHERS and DAUGHTERS

Paintings By

Leland Bell and Albert Kresch

Elizabeth Kresch and Temma Bell

September 16 - October 8, 2020

Opening Reception, Outdoors, Thursday, September 17, 4:00 - 6:30 PM

EXHIBITION OVERVIEW


"Picture early 1940s, Greenwich Village, NYC.  A young painter from Washington, D.C. spots another young man carrying a painting and wants to talk to him about it. Thus began a lifelong friendship of which painting was the spotlight and the glue. Both men married artists of equal creative fervor and commitment and they both had DAUGHTERS. Here lies a glimpse of their vision. The Influences and rebellions shine in measure - Different times - Genetic eyes."

                                                                                                                 Elizabeth Kresch, 2020

There are many families in which the children follow in the professional footsteps of one of their parents when setting out on their own career paths. The Arts are no exception. Elizabeth Kresch and Temma Bell, both of whose fathers and mothers were artists, joined the same profession, decades apart. This exhibition provides the viewer with the opportunity to compare and contrast the paintings of four individuals, each of whom was aware of and functioned in an art rich environment that influenced them in different ways over time. Leland Bell and Albert Kresch were colleagues and close friends, living and working in New York City, each absorbing - adapting or rejecting - in their own manner, the many different influences of the post-World War II years. Their chance meeting led to a close, lifelong friendship, despite the early marriage of Leland Bell to Louisa Mathiasdottier and the much later marriage of Albert Kresch to Patricia Middaugh. The families, too, intermingled over the decades.

Both daughters had the benefit of being exposed to the artistic movements and controversies that influenced their parents’ generation, along with those that raged in their decades of growth and maturation. Again, each of these next generation painters has been exposed to and accepted, rejected or adapted a myriad of movements, philosophies, styles and subject matters. Here, in FATHERS and DAUGHTERS, is a small sample of the results, stretching from the 1940s to the current year.