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February Issue 2007
Fountainside Gallery in Wilmington, NC, Features New Works by Jacob Cooley and Mary Rountree Moore
Fountainside Gallery's new year begins in Wilmington, NC, with the exciting exhibit of works from painter Jacob Cooley and the addition of new artist Mary Rountree Moore, on view through Feb. 28, 2007. Both are contemporary landscape artists whose works are wildly popular.
Jacob Cooley
Born in 1968, Cooley developed his desire to become an artist, going to school and graduating from the University of Georgia with a BFA in 1990. Three years later he received his MFA in painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He still maintains his studio nearby and has been an increasingly noticed and collected artist.
Writer Kate Dobbs Ariail describes his work saying, "Jacob Cooley's work has always been about light (and darkness), and it has been consistently impressive since his MFA exhibition at Carolina. Over the past seven years, he's made regular leaps of skill and refinement, with each show being better than the last, but the current work demonstrates the sensibility and control of a mature artist. The zen, meditative mood of his pieces, the glowingly soft treatment of the surface and the lyrical compositions make Cooley's transcendental landscapes speak softly, but powerfully to a wide range of appreciators and collectors. The new Fountainside Gallery paintings are even more appealing than the ones before, another indication of Cooley's continually developing maturity".
Mary Rountree Moore
Mary Rountree Moore, also from the Chapel Hill area, paints in a different style than Cooley, but the underlying sensitivity and serenity is the same. "I want people to feel a serenity that comes with being at peace," she says, "to smile, to want to go there, to feel strength in the power of the spirituality of the landscape; to be energized by the possibility and prospect of a new day".
Traveling to new environments to experience the landscapes and interpret the scene in a personal, sometimes abstract composition, is both work and play for her. The daughter of an accomplished portrait painter, Moore came to the creative process naturally and early. Her early career was as a fashion designer and later as a ceramicist. Three decades in design was, in fact, a detour from her first love, painting. Moore is now able to fully concentrate on her art on canvas, and is delighted to have the chance to spend her time doing the creative work she has a passion and a talent for.
Moore is a graduate of UNC at Chapel Hill and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in NYC, NY.
For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 910/256-9956 or visit (www.fountainsidegallery.com).
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