A Movable Feast by Peter Meadowsong

“I paint with transparent watercolor because its immediacy and expressiveness contradicts my natural insistence on control,” said Peter Meadowsong, Monmouth Museum’s New Jersey Emerging Artists Series artist presenting A Movable Feast from September 22nd through October 22nd, 2017. The transparent watercolor paintings will be featured in the Nilson Gallery at the Museum, located at 765 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft, NJ. The Opening Reception, September 22nd, will be held from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM.

Meadowsong's Gallery Talk will be held on September 27th from 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM, both the Opening Reception and the Gallery Talk are free and open to the public.

Meadowsong obtained an MA in Art from California State University, Sacramento in 1973. During his last year at CSU, he cobbled together a few thousand dollars and purchased nine acres of overgrazed hardscrabble on the eastern side of the northern Sacramento Valley. He built a small house, planted a small orchard, and then worked the local economy for the little cash necessary to get by. Seasonal work proved drastically inadequate and with a bachelor's degree in psychology, in 1975 he accepted a position as a social worker. Thirty-five years later, after erecting ten out-buildings, helping to plant over a thousand trees and shrubs, raising twins, and constructing a hundred or so pieces of furniture to sate his need to build things, Meadowsong retired and moved to Collingswood, New Jersey.

“I had been accepted into graduate school on the strength of my portfolio of watercolor paintings and now with time available, I was able to return to them,” he said. Previously, I had concentrated on rural landscapes: barns and junk yards, abandoned cars and rusted farm equipment. In the East Coast urban landscape I found the food cart by which I can best portray an urban verisimilitude.”

“In my NJ Emerging Artists Series exhibition, A Movable Feast, my intention is for the viewer to see why I think food carts are a delight to render. With the surrounding environment reflected and refracted by the quilted-metal siding, the rows of bottles and cans and condiment dispensers, the painted menus clipped to logoed umbrellas, the carts are paragons of efficient design, being able to offer an extensive menu of fast food in a portable establishment of just three hundred cubic feet.”

The New Jersey Emerging Artists Series, now in its eleventh season at the Monmouth Museum, features six annual solo exhibitions in the Nilson Gallery which provide a unique and exciting opportunity for New Jersey artists to showcase their work. The artists selected for this series represent the diversity of new talent in the State, and demonstrate their creativity in a wide variety of media. Gallery talks scheduled during the exhibitions offer the New Jersey Emerging Artists the opportunity to share insights on their work.

The Monmouth Museum, founded in 1963 as a Museum of Ideas, presents changing art, history and science exhibitions to educate and entertain while providing a destination for creative expression and life-long learning to the diverse community it serves. Imaginative and informative changing exhibitions in the Main Gallery and Nilson Gallery present a wide variety of art in all media.

The Monmouth Museum, an independent, non-profit organization, is located at 765 Newman Springs Road, in Lincroft, NJ. For hours and more information about the Monmouth Museum exhibits and programs visit the website at: www.monmouthmuseum.org or call 732-747-2266. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Museum’s Nilson Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm; Sunday 12pm-5pm.