By Lori Zelenko
With more than $100 million in important post-war and Contemporary art available for immediate acquisition at the third annual Hamptons Fine Art Fair July 14-17, 2022 will be held at the Southampton Fair Ground, a bucolic, expansive 17 acre site where the spectacular 40,000 square foot tent will showcase some of the world’s finest art from 43 cities and seven countries. Upscale, expertly curated and elite, this year’s artwork prices start at $10,000, however offerings will extend to well over seven figures.
Acknowledging the transformative vision of three outstanding women artists showing at the Fair, easthampton.com wanted to call out their exceptional aesthetic and compelling work. This work by the renowned Jane Freilicher, and two of this year’s awardees for Featured Artists, Elise Ansel (Carole Corey Gallery) and Jennifer JL Jones, (New River Fine Art), represents a stellar selection, a highlight of the prestigious international fine art fair from the producers of ShowHamptons. The work of these women artists is a standout in a Fine Art Fair that represents 400 artists from a global selection of 90 highly credentialled galleries. Overall, the Hamptons Fine Art Fair will focus on emerging artists and blue-chip masters as well as investment art and elegant decorative art, work ranges from modern to contemporary.
Executive Director of the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, Rick Friedman comments, “Our goal is to provide our fellow art-enthusiastic Hamptonites with a curated, high-caliber selection of important 20thand 21st century art – ranging from compelling emerging artists to the blue-chip masters.”
This year’s Hamptons Fine Art Fair potentially offers the deepest and widest selection of significant art ever offered in the Hamptons, Friedman continues, inviting all to save July 14 to attend the Fair’s gala opening, the Bastille Day Vernissage benefitting Guild Hall.
WOMEN ARTISTS TO WATCH AT THE HAMPTONS ART FAIR
JENNIFER JL JONES: EXPLORING BEAUTY AND ENERGY
Exploring beauty and energy, Jones’ mixed media paintings represented by New River Fine Art are a meditation upon nature’s hybrid manifestation of corporeal reality and intangible spirituality. Using a refined glazing technique to unify multiple layers of abstraction Jones combines mediums, creating rich, organic patinas to evoke universal connections both emotional and physical. Her paintings express their own history with layers of paint that give the impression of continuous movement, imbuing the work with a poetic, sensual grace that belies their bold execution. As Jones observes, “Beauty is everywhere and as an artist I interpret that beauty, whether it is found in the grace of a falling leaf, the burnt edges of a flower, a kaleidoscope of cloud formations, a glass-topped lake, or millions of crushed shells along a stretch of beach.” Each studio session for Jones is a form of meditation, she says, allowing her to push ahead through “process and paint, layers which build, symbolizing change, time, and growth. Crossing boundaries, noticing patterns, and finding answers through the process.” Layered glazes of color and mixed media, she elaborates, “create mood, atmosphere, and a vibration of energy unique to each viewer interacting with the final piece.” Her path as artist has been shaped by her travels, global exhibitions of her work have earned acclaim and brought the attention of collectors like Oprah Winfrey/Harpo studios as well as the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, and Burj Khalifa in UAE. She is working on her second coffee table book and compilation memoir.
Contemporary artist Jennifer JL Jones counts Oprah Winfrey among her collectors, she is represented by New River Fine Art at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair
ELISE ANSEL: CELEBRATING LIFE
Elise Ansel whose work is represented by Carol Corey Fine Art translates Old Master Paintings into a contemporary pictorial language. Old Master and Impressionist compositions familiar and loved by us are abstracted in her paintings as she deftly modernizes these classic works of art. Art history is essentially her blueprint as she reinvents gesture and color once formalized in representational compositions. Ansel abstracts the original imagery, in essence “smudges” it, reinterpreting through her contemporary lens. As she explains, “the historical paintings I work from become structures on which to hang paint; the soundness of these structures capacitates great improvisational freedom. The real subject becomes the substance and surface of oil paint, the variety of its applications, and the ways in which it can be used to celebrate life.” Her energetic, gestural work was formed by her education at The Rhode Island School of Design and Southern Methodist University where she earned her MFA, as well as her work in the film industry prior to adopting fine art as her preferred medium.
Contemporary artist Elise Ansel represented by Carol Corey Fine Art, one of the outstanding women artists at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair
JANE FREILICHER: MODEST, STEADFAST AND FLUENT
Lawrence Fine Arts is representing the work of Jane Freilicher whose career in distinctive painterly realism spanned more than sixty years. Known for her sweeping Long Island landscapes seen from her Water Mill studio window, and dazzling views of downtown Manhattan, her scenic representations are contrasted with accessible objects, traditional still life subjects, in the foreground. Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times has called her work, “the essence of serious painting, deceptively modest, steadfast and fluent.”
Freilicher flourished among such influential artists and poets as painters Willem de Kooning, Rudy Burckhardt, Joan Mitchell, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, and Alex Katz; and poets John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara. She studied with the legendary Hans Hofmann and had her first one woman show in 1952. Certainly, a recognizable talent on her own, she was one of only a handful of women artists who were exhibiting alongside their male counterparts at a time when Abstract Expressionism was creating new frontiers in the art world.
Represented in major museum collections throughout the United States, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, Freilicher’s paintings were included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. In 1996 she was awarded the Annual Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall in East Hampton.
Jane Freilicher is known for her Water Mill landscapes, “deceptively modern, steadfast and fluent” according to the New York Times.
She is represented at the Hamptons Art Fair by Lawrence Fine Arts.
OPENING NIGHT GALA
On Opening Night, July 14th, the Bastille Day Vernissage will benefit Guild Hall, with lead media partner Luxe Interiors and Design magazine. Cultural partner, The French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) will host VIP guests with a taste of France including fine wines tastings, Pommery champagne, and delicious French hors d’oeuvres. Setting the Parisian mood is a live performance of the popular French singer and recording star, Colette Perrier, and the French Heart Jazz Band. A spectrum of French aligned galleries will celebrate their national holiday at the fair, including Galerie Mark Hachem, Fremin Gallery, Galerie Calderone, Galerie L’Atelier, Helwaser Gallery, and The Selects Gallery.
For more information or to purchase tickets to the Gala, July 14, Vernissage benefitting Guild Hall at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, please visit www.hamptonsfineartfair.com
French Jazz Singer Chloe Perrier is set to entertain at the Opening Night Vernissage for the Hamptons Fine Art Fair.
Keep an eye out for French-aligned galleries showcasing wonderfully exciting work like this piece by Zavier Ellis, Courtesy of Blond Contemporary.
