"I have spent the last three winters painting on a farm in Pottstown, PA. This small plot of land is surrounded by looming suburban subdivisions edging ever nearer. But the farm survives.
The farm is an arena. It is a place of fear and instinct. The sheep shuffle by, clumsily crying out for their lost young. It is not uncommon to happen across a vertebrae picked clean by the buzzards or fur scattered by a fox at night. The land vibrates with textures, sounds, smells, and crawls with life. Stand in one place too long (to paint a picture, for example), and the dusty straw ground slowly pulls apart... revealing the smooth, wet clay beneath."
- Caleb Stoltzfus
Evidences Of An Excavation (Detail), 14.5" x 17", Oil On Panel
Caleb Stoltzfus (b. 1992) is originally from Elverson, PA. He began his art education studying at Studio Rilievo in Kennett Square, where he studied fundamentals of painting and drawing in the Classical traditions with Neilson Carlin for 4 years.
After graduating with a BA in art from Covenant College in 2015, he completed a year-long fellowship and solo show at The Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis. He then spent 2016-2017 studying pleinair landscape painting and multi-figure composition in the Russian tradition under artist Daud Akhriev. Caleb spent 2018-2020 working on a series of paintings called “Walt’s Farm”. He is currently based in Philadelphia.
Elizabeth Johnson: On Gross McCleaf’s website you describe a farm in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. You write: “The land vibrates with textures, sounds, smells, and crawls with life. Stand in one place too long (to paint a picture, for example) and the dusty straw ground slowly pulls apart . . . revealing the smooth, wet clay beneath.” Did you grow up on a farm? Why the strong bond with dirt and earth? Are you always looking for the basis of things? Or is this feeling a result of standing and working for days on one spot?
Caleb Stoltzfus: My upbringing was suburban. But my dad farmed for much of his life, before I was born, and he comes from a long line of Amish farmers. Farmers often believe, from their experience, they must conquer nature, overcome its dangers...
“I am interested in the way birds’ patterns mimic their environments, creating the beautiful and extreme designs of their plumage… Throughout my long painting career, I have worked on many series that are usually multiple years-long and evolve to and from the real and the ideal.”
- Barbara Sosson
Throughout her career spanning over 50 years, Barbara Sosson has developed stature in the Philadelphia arts community as a painter, designer, and gregarious personality. In Sensuous Shapes & Mimicry, Sosson struts her stuff with a grouping of new oil paintings that combine two wings of her practice: abstraction and representation.
