Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center Opens New Exhibit Featuring Roxborough Native

MANAYUNK -- The Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center recently held a grand opening for a new exhibit.

Painter Susan Shipley's resplendant “Swirling Color, Striving Soul” exhibition featuring landscapes and abstract paintings by Shipley, a Roxborough resident, along with artwork in various media and styles by members of the Manayunk-Roxborough Artists’ Co-Op, is now being displayed.

The reception included an art demonstration and participation for children, light refreshments, and a raffle of an original artwork by a Co-Op member, the Co-Op said.

Shipley has written that the painting and its title, "might be interpreted as suggesting that the process of creating art begins when the brain is stimulated by external or internal events, i.e., when a series of synapses fire at neurons."

This is only partially true, the Art Center said.

"The creative experience happens on a moral or metaphysical plane," according to the Art Center. "Internal stimuli begin within the artist’s soul, while examples of external stimuli include the artist’s reaction to social injustices or environmental devastation."

Shipley’s oil painting, “Raging Winds” also employs an intense color palette. Although abstract, the swirling shape that occupies the work’s center strongly suggests what its title denotes, the Art Center said.

“Waiting for Time” offers an impression of a path in the foreground that disappears into an abstract “forest” of yellow, green and brown.

Image courtesy Manayunk-Roxborough Art Center.