RIVER VALE — For artist Jean Marie Bucich, the flowers in her oil paintings aren’t just botanical subjects. They’re luminous, architectural, and often larger than life — meant to be experienced up close, where color, shadow, and scale take over.
This winter, Bucich’s work is featured in “Springboard: Members’ Juried Exhibition,” opening Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Newport Art Museum in Newport, R.I. The show will include work by more than 80 artists and will remain on view through May.
The opening reception, 6 to 7:30 p.m., is free and open to the public, with awards presented that evening by this year’s juror, Julie Keyes, founder and principal of Keyes Art, a global art consultancy based in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
Bucich (jeanmariebucich.com), who is based in River Vale, will exhibit her painting “Earth Soul,” a 16-by-20-inch oil on canvas featuring white hydrangea, painted with careful attention to light and form.
“I’m very excited to be a part of this exhibit as Newport is a special place,” Bucich tells Pascack Press. She notes that her earliest memories of Newport were formed there with her family, and that she has exhibited at Jessica Hagen Fine Art, 9 Bridge St., Newport, since 2019.
In her artist statement, Bucich describes her large-scale oils as a blend of classical technique and contemporary impact — paintings that reward in-person viewing, where viewers can take in their depth and scale.
“Inspired by nature, I became interested in the architectural detail of flowers, their vibrant color and their moment in time,” Bucich writes. “These over-scaled floral portraits draw the viewer into the detail of each flower’s anatomy.” In her work, she adds, chiaroscuro — the dramatic interplay of light and dark — is placed “against the transparency of the flower, aglow with life.”
Bucich earned her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. Her background includes intensive study in painting and art history, including Old Master techniques. Her work has been shown in galleries and competitions, and is held in private collections internationally.
Although “Earth Soul” is the piece selected for Springboard, Bucich also recently completed a larger work, “Homage to the Blue Porch,” a 36-by-48-inch oil on canvas inspired by a painting by Howard Gardiner Cushing, a Newport painter whose work is on exhibit at the Newport Art Museum.
The Springboard exhibition marks the return of the museum’s members’ juried show — an effort, museum officials said, to respond to audience enthusiasm and to spark new dialogue between older and contemporary work.
“Building off an exciting summer season and the success of ‘Wet Paint,’ we are bringing back the Members’ Juried Exhibition to respond to what our community wants and what they love most about the Newport Art Museum,” said Harry Philbrick, the museum’s executive director, in outreach shared with Pascack Press. “This year’s theme will foster new conversations between past and present, revealing how history continues to inspire and challenge contemporary practice.”
According to the museum, artists were invited to explore “cultural inheritance, artistic lineage, and collective memory,” with selected works presented alongside highlights from the museum’s permanent collection.
