When consummate artistic skill comes together with deep-rooted patriotism, the power of painting reaches new heights. This is poignantly demonstrated by an exhibition of recent works by Barbara Ernst Prey, which will be on view at the Hutchins Gallery in the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University from October 27 through November 23, 2002. Prey, a gifted local artist with an international reputation for her watercolors, has committed the past year to an exploration of her response to the tragic events of last September. The result is a group of highly expressive paintings that combine Prey's bold and intuitive use of color with intricate brushwork to capture and re-define the American spirit.

The exhibition will feature approximately 30 large paintings and 25 smaller works, some of which are studies for these larger images. The exhibition, titled The Trace in the Mind: Paintings in Response to the Tragedy of September 11th, was curated by Professor Charles Riley II, writer, critic and popular lecturer. Deeply appreciative of the artist's vision, Riley praises her talent in his catalogue essay as follows: "Prey's new works are immense, lovingly rendered, long meditations that test her limits in densely worked, allover compositions alive from edge-to-edge with technical problems posed and powerfully solved.... On this scale, at this extraordinarily lofty technical level, the significance of the achievement gradually dawns. With 30 years' experience in a career filled with internationally significant honors, commissions and exhibitions, Prey as a virtuoso recognizes the need to dynamically challenge herself."

In her monumental works, Prey examines how light transforms familiar scenes into unique and truly meaningful compositions. This transforming light is often a metaphor for physical and spiritual being. David Mitten, curator of the Harvard University Art Museum reflects, "While profoundly American, at the same time these paintings partake of the universal values of light and color, which create coherent, evocative spaces of great beauty and enduring significance."

Born in New York, Barbara Ernst Prey studied at Williams College and Harvard University. She received a Fulbright Scholarship and a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, enabling her to travel, study, work and exhibit extensively in Europe and Asia. While she absorbed many influences from her travels, she remained an American artist rooted in the traditions of Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper. Prey currently lives with her family in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and claims Maine as a second home and source of inspiration, having worked and exhibited there for several decades.

Barbara Ernst Prey is considered one of the foremost landscape painters active in the United States today. One of her paintings, in the collection of President and Mrs. George W. Bush, is currently on display at The White House. Many of her other works are included in prominent private, corporate and museum collections throughout the world.

Ms. Prey is an artistic ambassador for her country, having been chosen this year to participate in the United States Arts Embassies Program. Her painting "Reunion at Dusk" is on view at the United States Embassy in Prague, hanging in the company of works by such noted artists as Albert Bierstadt, John Singer Sargent and Richard Diebenkorn. Another of Prey's paintings, "Hayrolls," is on exhibition at the United States Embassy in Oslo, Norway. The Arts in Embassies Program promotes national pride and cultural awareness by presenting the work of influential American artists to a broad, international audience. Other artists involved in the program include Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Chuch Close. Domestically, Prey has exhibited this past year at the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York; The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York; the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and over the summer, at Blue Water Fine Arts in Port Clyde, Maine. She is represented by Pamela Auchincloss in New York.

The Trace in the Mind: Paintings in Response to the Tragedy of September 11th will commence with an artist’s reception in the Hutchins Gallery on Sunday, October 27, 5 to 7 p.m. The gallery is located in the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, 720 Northern Boulevard, Brookville, NY. The exhibition is sponsored by the C.W. Post Hutton House Lectures. For additional information about the exhibition, gallery hours or the reception, call the gallery at (516) 299-2892.

For information about the artist, see http://www.barbaraprey.com/