The land along the Delaware River is rife with artists who portray the river and its environment in all its splendor. Here are just four outdoors enthusiasts and artists who honor this federally-designated “Scenic and Recreational River” and surrounding landscape as the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DEWA) celebrates the National Park Service Centennial this year.
“I am intrigued by the history of where I live, and I like to reveal it back to people in my painting,” says Marie Liu, first Artist in Residence of DEWA from summer 2015 to 2016. Liu was a landscape painter in Orange County, New York, frustrated because beautiful places were usually private property. Now in Milford, her dreams have come true with the freedom to hike and explore a wealth of state and federal land, perfectly open to the public. More...
William D. Hobbs, biologist, teacher and oil painter, builds his style upon the Hudson River School artists’ reverence for the natural world. He is inspired by late 19th century art and writings of Thoreau and the scientific aspect that everything in nature is worth studying. “With my training as a biologist, painting is another form of exploration. Science and art are one,” he says. The combination reveals itself in his work, where the viewer can almost feel the sunlight and moving water that is the focus of most of his paintings. More...
The free-flowing, undammed Delaware River has inspired Columbia resident Ken Metcalf, for twenty years with its beauty and the way light plays off the water. “The river is awesome,” he says. “How peaceful it is. And the way light reflects causes me to be reflective and meditative.” More...
In 1952, when most of us that were here were still dabbling in crayons, Fred Kirberger was already at work as an illustrator with Charles E. Cooper Studio in New York City. Although he has painted scenes from Maine to Seattle, Kirberger was always drawn to the Delaware Water Gap since his days “as a kid” when he went to Shawnee to hear Fred Waring’s orchestra. “I went out with a girl who had a beautiful voice,” he remembers. “I got her an interview with Waring, and we drove up there one day in my Austin Healey. He hired her on the spot, and that was the end of my girlfriend!” More...
