Opening Reception for the Artist - Marc Schepens: Stripers and Blues

Marc Schepens honors the power of nature and the hand-drawn line in his painting practice. To represent the presence of the ocean, Marc Schepens works directly on linen with oil and pencil, patterning broken lines that register light, weather, time, and movement. The formal qualities of line present the pretense of control over the ever-changing surface of the ocean, while allowing for the breaks, interruptions and the illusion of motion.

Schepens’ paintings converse with histories of place, landscape, and abstraction. His current exhibition “Stripers and Blues” pays tribute to the sport fish (striped bass and bluefish) that teem the shores of the North Atlantic and specifically the North Shore of Massachusetts. Schepens’ stunning abstractions of the Nahant coast are visual metaphors for the ocean and the passage of time. Schepens’ painting practice finds its lineage in both landscape and abstraction, drawn to the light of Fitz Henry Lane and the minimalism of Agnes Martin. Schepens’ Untitled Date paintings symbolize the ocean, but more importantly, they connect and acknowledge time: the deep past and the unknowable future.

Marc Schepens lives in Nahant, a small town on the coast of Massachusetts. Schepens was born in Boston in 1977. He received his MFA from Boston University in 2011. He is the Director of the School of Visual Arts at Boston University and a Senior Lecturer in Art in Painting and Drawing.