BEST OF SOUTHCOAST

Peter C. Stone SM

Crescent (Tidelines)
Peter C. Stone, Oil on Canvas

 

Best Of SouthCoast 
June 12 - August 31

For centuries, the creative energy of SouthCoast artists has been fired by a rich combination of the natural beauty of the land, sea, and sky, by the taste and prosperity of generations of patrons and collectors, by the manifold cultural inspirations of successive waves of immigrants and an enduring Indigenous community, and by the artists themselves by force of their collaboration and community.

Best of SouthCoast brings together the works of 75 artists working in a wide array of media and forms over a span of hundreds of years. The New Bedford Art Museum is proud to mark its 30th year with a show that is both an investigation of the diverse visual art produced locally and a celebration of the artists who have made this work.

We invite you to come in, trust your eyes and your ideas, and discover the common threads and the unique visions that join and distinguish these artists.
Welcome.

Elizabeth LindSM
Ellen Watson SM

Elizabeth Lind
Lovers Afloat, 2016
Alabaster
21”x 15” x 11"

Ellen Lewis Watson
The Swimmer, 1998
Bronze
4'10" x 16" x 19"

ARTIST BIO
Artist Bio

Ellen was born in Charleston, SC, but for the last 40 years has lived and worked in Dartmouth MA. Growing up in the south, on a coastline of miles of salt marshes, the land itself and the sense of place has always played a significant role in her work. Only recently, after years of living in New England, has this landscape begun to seep into her work.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement

To use a shamanic term, my work is about ”walking between worlds”. It is an attempt to see the unseen and to connect civilization and wilderness, conscious and unconscious, the mundane and the magical. That quality of being in an ordinary world, but also seeing and sensing the numinous always there just under the surface, is one that I seek in my life and in my work. I have a fundamental belief in a connected and fluid universe.
Severin Haines SM
Anna Forro

Severin Haines
Trees in Winter, 1975
Oil on Canvas
41”x 41” 

Anna Forro
Sink, 2025
Oil on Canvas
30”x 30”

ARTIST BIO
Artist Bio

Severin Haines 1946-2023 Born in Skudeneshavn, Norway, Severin Haines immigrated to Fairhaven, MA with his family and began taking classes at New Bedford’s Swain School of Design when he was still in grade school. He enrolled at Swain as an undergraduate, earning a BFA in 1968, and went on to earn a MFA at Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture in 1972. From 1975 until 1988, he taught as a member of the faculty of the Swain School and served as chairman of the painting department. He began teaching at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with the merger of the Swain School and the University in 1988. He later served as graduate director for the University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, retiring as an emeritus professor in 2011 after thirty-five years in the classroom. Known as a colorist and purist landscape painter, the work of Severin Haines was widely exhibited in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in both museums and galleries in New York, NY, Boston, MA, Seattle, WA, Nashville, TN, Stavanger, Norway, Pennsylvania, Martha’s Vineyard, and locally at the New Bedford Art Museum, Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Water Street Gallery, Marion Art Center, and Gallery X among many other venues. Sig also painted large public murals in New Bedford and Fairhaven and curated six exhibitions for the New Bedford Art Museum. His work is part of the permanent collections of the New Bedford Free Public Library and the Millicent Library in Fairhaven.
ARTIST BIO
Artist Bio

Anna Foro is a recent graduate from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with a BFA in Painting. She primarily works in oil on panel or watercolor and often finds beauty in the unexpected. In 2024, Anna’s work was included in the exhibition Rites of Passage at the Manifest Center for the Visual Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement

My work seeks to address the complexities of conflict, externally and interpersonally. Through painting and mixed media, I explore how themes of neglect, guilt, and innocence intertwine.

I depict private, untampered spaces similarly to how one would encounter them in real life, with the intention of amplifying and finding significance in the often overlooked, gruesome, or neglected mundane. My decision to omit the figure is intentional; I intend the viewer to take the place of the absent figure. My body of work strives to evoke both empathy and uncertain

Joyce Shi SM
Library SM

Joyce Shi
Prayer ll, 2024
Obsidian, Hemp, Ebony, Padauk, 81 Hours
65”x 3.5”x 1" 

Albert Bierstadt
Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie, 1869
Chromolithograph
32”x 18”

Collection of the New Bedford Free Public Library

ARTIST BIO
Artist Bio

Joyce Shi is an interdisciplinary artist exploring ritual and seduction through sculptures made of wood, glass, and stone. She graduated from RISD with a BFA degree in Glass, and is the recipient of a John A. Chironna Scholarship as well as the Pilchuck Partner Student Scholarship. She is currently based in Providence, Rhode Island, where her work has been exhibited in various galleries. Her work is informed by her multi-cultural identity, as well as her interest in transformation, craft, and alchemy.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement

My work is informed by ritual, from both its relevance in early spiritual practices as well as through its symbolism in ancient archaeological contexts. I’m drawn to the manifestation of natural formations of mimicry, expressed through occult sciences and alchemical contexts. The imagery of my work is closely tied to the natural world, specifically defense systems that occur within bodily structures. In pushing the boundary of familiarity through abstraction, I find different areas of balance between representing something and truly personalizing my objects to myself.

The value of labor and sacrifice is incredibly important to my working process. Putting my body, as well as time spent in a project, strongly contributes to the pride I feel towards the piece later on. An essential part of my practice lies within the detailing. The creation of fragility is a form of seduction—a means to draw attention inwards. My relationship with material is an intimate one, my body—both physically and psychologically—fluctuates with the making of each project: Each piece of work becomes a physical manifestation of my personhood as I continue to change, recording time. Much like the materials I work with, wood, stone, and glass are all entities that hold memory of their countless transformations. In the end, everything I make becomes an evidence to the pursuit of building a home within myself.

Library 2 no frame
Library 4 no frame

Clifford W. Ashley
Harpooning a Porpoise (from the Martingale Stay of a Whaler), 1906
Oil on Canvas,
21”x 30” 

Collection of the New Bedford Free Public Library

Charles Henry Gifford

Untitled (Two Ships at Sunset), 1899
Oil on Canvas
9.25”x 14”

Collection of the New Bedford Free Public Library, Gift of Susan Koch in memory of Annie Meade and Frances Aloysc Koch

Shattuck
Gayle

William Shattock
Gateway

Gayle Wells Mandle
Self Portrait, 2023
Mixed Media
48”x 48” 

ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement

Drawing, painting and the entire process of creating a visual image is part detective story... a personal journey of discovery... and an act of pure joy in connecting with both abstract thoughts and what seems like simplicities in nature but turn out revealing much farther complexity than at first thought. Sometimes epiphanies of what can seem obvious but on second thought express deeper truths. Whether in very narrative compositions on religion, psychology, or human nature, drawing allows me to arrange and compose to engage with a responsive chord in people.

The actual use of whatever I choose to draw with has its own characteristics, whether it be charcoal, lead pencil, conte crayon, etc. Each comes to the moment with something to teach... the weight of the line... the turn or the edge of the tool... the ability to teach me something new.

With painting, I am still very much drawing, from the beginning to the very end. My explorations of the environment I live in pushes me to sketch out sometimes small images quickly and then rearrange or choreograph them in my studio to try and evoke a certain time of day or weather conditions. Working like this, as well in finished drawings, can be long and laborious but a great thrill on completion.

ARTIST STATEMENT
Artist Statement

I studied painting at the height of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960’s. My early impulses of cutting open my oil paint tubes and gluing them onto the canvas has stayed with me. I still enjoy using found objects and recycled materials in my artwork and interior design.

Through my years of designing interiors, I have found the process similar to painting. The composition of a space is the balancing of scale, shape, color, and texture just like on a canvas.

In mid-career I returned to painting, and earned an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from RISD. One professor there said, “I know you all can paint, but what do you have to say?”

Thus my paintings tell stories with current socio-political themes of environment, human rights, emotions and politics. I create them abstractly, juxtaposing the real with the imagined. I layer my archival photographs with the gestures of paint and various textures. I often write and erase text, mixing it with old ledger papers and handwriting of others. My process involves continual adding and editing, the story revealed and then partially veiled to engage in a “hide and seek dialogue” with the observer.