“All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore. ”

― Herman Melville

L O O M I N G S Paintings in Oil and Tar

The paintings in LOOMINGS, named after the first chapter of Moby-Dick, are executed in tar, bitumen (a naturally occurring petroleum asphalt), and oil paint. In these paintings, I've wanted the the natural color of the tar to evoke at times the sepia of old photographs and etchings, at others a stark, enveloping organic darkness.

Modern global industrialization began with the Quaker whaling ships that sailed out of New England; whale oil lit the Victorian world and fueled the onset of the industrial revolution in England and America. Whale oil was replaced by the discovery in 1859 of petroleum, from which the tar I use is derived. Nineteenth-century sailors used tar to waterproof hulls and wooden tools. As the basis of multinational corporate globalization, petroleum/oil/asphalt/tar points to the triumphs as well as the failings of modern human achievement. It also resonates for me as the paved acreage of my suburban childhood home on Long Island sound.

The series was inspired by Melville’s apocalyptic vision of the American quest as well as nineteenth-century New Bedford-born painter Albert Pinkham Ryder’s work and his use of tar, presumably for its slick, dark blacks. Several titles are quotes taken from Melville’s novel. “Contained in the pages of Moby-Dick is nothing less than the genetic code of America,” Nathaniel Philbrick has written, “all the promises, problems, conflicts, and ideals that contributed to the outbreak of a revolution in 1775, civil war in 1861, and continue to drive this country’s ever-contentious march into the future.” Several paintings explicitly reference solitary sailing ships adrift on troubled seas, an ancient metaphor for the human predicament in general.

After 150 additional years of oil-driven industrialization, humanity continues to exploit nature without adequately understanding our place within it or even our own history, still tempting Ahab's unknowable gods, and flouting signs and portents of extinction.

- Christopher Volpe

Acushnet, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 36 inches(Acushnet was the name of the ship Melville shipped on and then abandoned in the Marquesas Islands in 1841)

Any Human Thing, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches(“I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.”)

Squall, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches(“I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol- fire your ship right into it!”)

Fata Morgana, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Towards Thee I Roll, 2016, bitumen and oil on canvas, 8 x 8 inches

True Places, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 48 inches (“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”)

T’Gallant Sails, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

Horizon Sails 3 (The Albatross), 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 24 x 18 inches

T’Gallant Sails (detail)

Horizon Sails 1 (The Delight), 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 18 x 18 inches

Flukes, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

The Muffled Rolling of a Milky Sea, 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

White Whale, 2015, bitumen and tar on canvas, 8 x 8 inches

Break, Break, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 12 x 12 inches

Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft (Painting at the Spouter-Inn), 2015, oil and tar on canvas, 16 x 24 inches

A Note on “Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft (Painting at the Spouter-Inn)”

LOOMINGS began in response to Ishmael’s description, in chapter three, of an old maritime painting, so begrimed and inscrutable as to be nearly abstract, hanging in the Spouter-Inn at New Bedford.

After speculating about what the artist meant to show (“the unnatural combat of the four primal elements,” “chaos bewitched”) Ishmael focuses on “a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture.” He finally decides the painting represents “a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.”

The series represented in LOOMINGS followed from “Purposing to Spring Clean Over the Craft,” the result of my desire to create a real painting based on the description in Moby-Dick.

All that Most Maddens and Torments, 2016, oil and tar on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

Any Human Thing (detail)

Christopher Volpe

Solo Exhibitions

Borderlands, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2016

LOOMINGS, Owen Smith Shuman Art Gallery, Groton Public Library, 2016

Seacoast Squared, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2015

Sea & Sky, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH, 2013

Dream Diary, Loft 3, the Gallery at 194 Middle St., Lowell, MA, 2013

Paintings of the Isles of Shoals, Portsmouth Discovery Center, August 2012

Plein-Air Paintings of the Seacoast, Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth, NH 2012

Featured artist, Liberty Hotel, Boston, MA, November 2011 & 2010

Into the Mystic, Solo Show, Kennedy Gallery, 2011

Selected Group Exhibitions

80th Regional, Fitchburg Museum, Fitchburg, MA, 2015

Icons, with Patrick McCay, Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2015

Boston International Fine Art Show, 2009-2014

Unreliable Witnesses, Loading Dock Gallery, Lowell, MA, 2015

Flowers in Winter, Portsmouth Discovery Center, Portsmouth NH, 2014

Invitational Fine Art Show, Ogunquit Museum of American Art, 2012

Lake Effect, The Banks Gallery, Castle in the Clouds, Moultonborough, NH, 2012

Featured Artist, Hatfield Gallery, Manchester NH, 2012

Reflection, with Stan Moeller, Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, MA, September 2011

Starry Night (Paintings of Star Island), Banks Gallery, Portsmouth, NH, 2009

Island Light, Banks Gallery, Portsmouth, NH, 2008

UNH Faculty and Staff Show, Durham, NH, 2008

Publications

Christopher Volpe’s Black Paintings, Mud Season Review #12, September 2015

Residencies, Grants & Awards

Artist in Residence, AMC Highland Center, Brentwood, NH, 2014, 2015

Artist in Residence, Star Island, NH, Star Island Corp., 2014-2015

Artist Advancement Grant, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, 2012

Assets for Artists Grant, Mass MoCA & the Midas Collaborative, 2011

Graphic Arts Program Advisory Board, Manchester College, 2010

New Hampshire Humanities Council Grant, 2010

McNair Faculty Mentor, University of New Hampshire, 2006

Calderwood Fellowship for teaching writing across the disciplines, Boston Athenaeum and Franklin Pierce College, 2005

Ann Pazo Mayberry award for poetry, University of New Hampshire, 1996

Contact

www.christophervolpe.com

603.770.3058 chris@christophervolpe.com