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Upcoming Shows

Ridgefield Art Festival Ballard Park - Ridgefield, CT June 29th and 30th 2024

Lenox Summer Art Festival Lilac Park - Lenox, MA July 13th & 14th 2024

East Hampton Village Festival East Hampton Middle School 76 Newtown Lane East Hampton, NY July 27th & 28th 2024

Saratoga Arts Celebration Saratoga Spa State Park - Saratoga Springs, NY August 17th & 18th 2024

Past Shows

Westport Fine Art Festival Main St. and Elm St., Westport, CT May 2024

Sag Harbor Arts & Crafts Fair Marine Park Drive, Sag Harbor, NY September 2023

Southampton Festival of the Arts 51 Pond Lane, Southampton, NY August 2023

SAA Art in the Park Agawam Park, Southampton, NY July 2023

Sag Harbor Arts & Crafts Fair Marine Park Drive, Sag Harbor, NY June 2023

Montauk Artists Association Show on the Green The Green, Montauk, NY June 2023

Maggie Burbank Arts & Crafts Show The Great Lawn, Westhampton Beach, NY
May 2023

Tessa Gibbons: Light & Dark North Shore Public Library, Shoreham, NY
April 2019

About Tessa Gibbons

I grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley and I received the bulk of my arts education in public school. I have been painting and drawing ever since I can remember and I am mostly self-taught. I have also gone to school for film making (NYU School of Continuing Education) and acting (Atlantic Theater Company Acting School). After having children I found pursuing acting and theater work difficult, but I still needed (more than ever) a way to express myself artistically. And so I returned to my first love, painting and drawing. Raising children invites great change and upheaval and beauty into your life, and returning to the visual arts kept me sane and centered. The years of acting were not lost, however. I feel, deep inside of me, my theater and film experience is linked with my visual arts experience. I often think of the story of my paintings. Perhaps it’s a story about a particular mood, or color, or facial expression. When I paint I need to know what story I am trying to tell.

I work primarily in two media: oil on canvas, digital photography and digital drawings using my iPad Pro. In painting, the start of my process is a photograph. If there is something in the world that moves me, I photograph it. Then I ask the question, is this a photograph, or is it a painting? Often I don’t feel there is anything more to add to the image. But some things are best expressed through paint and I find that this can be especially true for images of the ordinary, or photos that are “bad”. Ordinary scenes, to my mind, become extraordinary through the care, thought and time devoted to the painting process. Sometimes the ordinary is stranger or more significant than you might think. Also important to the painting process: music. Each painting tends to get an album or artist assigned to it, one that, for me, keeps me in touch with the mood I am trying to convey. A lonely road at dusk? Totally “Lost in the Dream” by The War on Drugs. Female power? Absolutely “Visions of a Life” by Wolf Alice.

My goal in most of my work is to convey some kind of mood or emotion. Sometimes the mood is dark, sometimes light. Which painting conveys which, however, can be ambiguous. I have created work that, for me, came out of a fear of loss and a sense of the fragility of life, but which many people see as light and positive. Other darker seeming pieces came from a sense of beauty and romanticism. Sometimes I’m just having fun ;) . Which is which is ultimately in the eye of the viewer.