Natural Talent

A rural upbringing imprinted itself on accomplished painter Libby Newman.

by Robin Rice

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"Retrospective" is a suitable title for Libby Newman's show at Villanova: The accomplished painter and printmaker's entire oeuvre reflects her early years in the rural town of Rockland, near Wilmington, Del.

Until she was 18, Newman lived in a house with no running water or heat. Both water pump and outhouse were on the other side of a creek. Her father was the town's postmaster and also ran a classic general store and gasoline station. "My father loved ... fishing on the Brandywine, which I [also] used to do all the time."

The gorgeous countryside imprinted itself on the young girl's psyche and became central to her work as an artist, as an ineffable influence on shapes and colors and the way visual experience fills the eye.

Newman attended Penn and later the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), and by 1960, her work was being shown.

"We all know that it's a man's world," says Newman, who was born in 1925. "But [as an artist] I did not experience that. I got in exhibits. I sold my work. ... I was exceptionally lucky and it happened fairly quickly."

Matisse and Rembrandt are among the artists she admires — one a master of color, the other of feeling. "Color," she says, "has its own life. It breathes its own breath. It has its own universe. The colors and nature are what this earth has given us."

As a painter she moved from expressive representation and mythological themes toward near abstraction. Her métier became woodcuts and paintings on wood screens. "Being from the country and loving trees," she says, "it came naturally to me."

As a curator for the University City Science Center (now Esther M. Klein Art Gallery), she recognized a lack of exhibition opportunities for artists of color and made a point of addressing this through shows and catalogs. Regarding all the shows she's organized, Newman says, "I always said to myself, 'Libby, don't play God,' but of course you are. You are rejecting some people and accepting others. I hope I've helped a lot of people."

Newman's work is owned by about 28 museums and libraries worldwide, including collections in Israel, Hungary, Japan, Argentina, China, Serbia and, of course, our own Philadelphia Museum of Art.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

"Libby Newman: Retrospective," through June 15, Connelly Center, Villanova U., 800 Lancaster Ave., Villanova, 610-519-4612, artgallery.villanova.edu.