JOEL BABB

The study of art history and the influence of Rome and the classical tradition were the sources of Joel Babb's desire to set aside modernism and ground his study of painting on earlier models. Realistic cityscapes are probably the works for which Babb is best known since they reside in major corporate collections.

In the late 1980's Babb began a series of large landscapes of the understory of the Maine woods with the foreground at life-size scale. These extraordinary paintings, now in private and corporate collections, have been loaned to numerous museum shows over the years.

Babb has been painting scenes of the tropical preserves and backwaters of Florida since the late 1990's. Babb's paintings of the primeval wetlands with the sunlight filtering through the tropical flora, and onto the surface of the water and sinking further to the rocks and sand below are one man's dynamic, technically masterful, yet gentle vision.