"Balanced on the Biggest Wave" | Tar, oil on canvas in Victorian frame

Chris Volpe’s Loomings paintings combine liquefied coal tar, oil paint, and gold leaf. The series is named after the first chapter in Melville‘s Moby Dick, and each paintings title pointedly references the books apocalyptic vision of the American quest. Recalling the whale oil was the precursor to petroleum, the foreboding maritime imagery in the industrial mediums, metallic blacks, tin type grays, and sepia tones, invoke Melville‘s novel as a cautionary foundational myth for our own age of accelerating climate change and social disruption.

Item Detail:

• Unique, one-of-a-kind creation
• Signed by artist
• Approx 31”H 27”W

About the Artist |

Chris Volpe  is an artist, writer, and teacher who is born and raised on Long Island. He currently works and lives in New Hampshire. His paintings in tar and gold leaf reference mortality, mysticism, and concern for the fate of a world buying and spending its way toward uninhabitability. His work is collected internationally and held in the permanent collections of Smith College and the Whistler House Museum. Grants and awards include the Saint Botolph Club Foundation, MassMoCA/Assets for Artists, and the NH State Council on the Arts Artist Advancement Grant. With degrees from the University of New Hampshire and Stony Brook University, he has taught painting, literature, mythology, and the history of art at various colleges and universities. He writes regularly about art and artists online and off.