RiverArts is bringing back its “Salon Sundays” tours of local artists’ studios, starting with virtual visits on Feb. 27 and March 27, and then transitioning to in-person on April 24, May 22, and June 26.
The series, featuring artists who have participated in the annual RiverArts Studio Tour, allows visitors to view their work and learn about their techniques and creative process. The series producer is photographer Jeff Dietz, a former resident of Tarrytown and board member of RiverArts, who now lives in Beacon.
“When we originally started the program in November of 2019, we got in a few months of very successful programming, and then the pandemic hit,” Dietz told the Enterprise. “It was a pretty simple ask, to have it done virtually, and to help artists feel there was still a community to engage with. It’s been received very well; the people who attended seemed to like it and the artists seemed appreciative of having another way to get their work out there.”
The first 2022 salon, featuring painter Edward Bear Miller of Tarrytown, will be live on Instagram on Sunday, Feb. 27, at 3 p.m. Follow RiverArts on Instagram, and then click on the RiverArts logo, which will be highlighted during the visit, indicating it is “live.”
Miller, a former Hastings resident, is a native of Washington, D.C. He began painting when he was in high school, and worked as a social studies teacher before committing himself to art full-time in 2009.
Miller paints almost exclusively in oil, and often on large canvases. He melds realist and expressionist elements, whether he chooses architectural forms and familiar Hudson River landmarks, nature studies, portraits of famous historical figures, or nudes. Miller’s vigorous brushstrokes, liberal use of paint, and mastery of light and shadow make his images pulsate with energy. An avid outdoors enthusiast, he enjoys adventures with his family in the Adirondacks, as well as painting outdoors along the Hudson.
Lately, he has been spending more time in his studio, working on a project he calls “Aids to Contemplation of the Republic,” a look at America’s past through portraiture and iconography.The series, rendered in oil paints and using large American flags as the canvases, has reached 35 pieces, and counting.
“I’m constantly making these,” he said on Feb. 19. “I think of it as a celebration and expansion of the flag. The flag is symbolic of our history and our potential. I’m exploring that aspect of American-ness and American identity through the flag.”
Featured are seminal figures in American history. There are paintings adapted from the famous mug shot of civil rights trailblazer Rosa Parks, and from a photograph of abolitionist heroine Sojourner Truth. There are musicians and authors; modern-day crusaders such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem. Miller explained that the subjects are people “that I think of as ‘better angels of our nature,’” referring to a quote from Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address.
One of his favorite subjects is Sitting Bull, the Lakota leader who became a performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and was killed during a struggle with U.S. Indian Service police at Standing Rock, South Dakota, in 1890. “I could dedicate the rest of my career to Sitting Bull and I’d be happy,” Miller said. “His story is so illustrative of ‘manifest destiny’s’ wreckage.”
Miller works for about six to nine hours a day, in his studio as well as at the Main Street Atelier in downtown Tarrytown, where he paints from a live model every week. He’s also always on the lookout for local places to set up his easel. “I love painting Tarrytown, frankly,” he said. “And I just love the Mario Cuomo Bridge. I think it’s breathtakingly beautiful and I’ve done a few paintings of it.”
Future “Salon Sundays” artists are still to be announced. Recordings of the 2021 virtual salons are available on RiverArts’ Instagram page.
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