The Long View

This was written after the opening of The Long View: Women Artists in the Studio, at Suffolk University (October 14- November 21.) The exhibition is the first of three that will take place over the course of the academic year, bringing together Boston area women artists whose lives have been shaped by years of steadily working. While I am one of the artists in this first exhibit, these words are meant as a tribute—to the curators, my fellow Long View artists, and to the very notion that women making art over an entire lifetime is something worth calling out. What follows are thoughts on endurance, attention, and what it means to live a creative life over the long arc of time.

The title of this art exhibit series—The Long View—lands somewhere in me that is below language, near the solar plexus. To live an entire life making art is, at its core, an act of long looking—not only outward toward the visible world, but inward, toward the quiet, persistent undercurrents moving beneath the surface. It is the act of returning, again and again, to the studio: a place designated, inter alia, for enlarging the soul.

Standing in the Suffolk University Art Gallery among works by Ellen Rich, Julia Shepley and Maggie Stark, I feel a sense of kinship in the shared recognition that comes from years of making. The materials we are using differ—paint, wood, paper, pigment, photography, video—but each carries the residue of attention, of a hand that keeps showing up. There is no sense of hurry here. The tempo feels seasonal, like weather or the tide. A rhythm of persistence.

Curators Deborah Davidson and Audrey Goldstein have shaped something that feels less like a series of exhibitions and more like a continuum of deep conversations. Installed alongside each other, our works have found their own connections. My paintings hang on the middle wall. On one side is a cadenced array of photographs by Julia exploring how light and shadow move through space. On the other side is the explosive color of Ellen’s warmly welcoming works on paper. Across the expanse of the gallery, Maggie’s installation is a lynchpin of depth, quietude and power.

What lingers for me afterward is not any single image or surface, but the sense of atmosphere that emerges from this coming together. It is the presence of continuance. That word feels central to this project—a yearlong honoring of twelve women who have persisted in their making despite distraction, disappointment, and, at many points in time, disregard.

This kind of endurance carries its own sense of devotion. The years of showing up again and again begin to take on the shape of a spiritual practice even though it may look from the outside like simple daily labor. Chop wood, carry water.

Yes, all these artists are seasoned. (Is that just code for older? We need better terms!) They tend to not have been swayed by novelty, fad or fashion. For them it is the work first—a commitment to going deeper, then deeper still. To stay with that effort for decades requires a belief that meaning is made in the doing, that attention itself is the gift. Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” That line could be the show’s invisible epigraph.

This exhibition affirms what I have long believed: the measure of an artist’s life is not the visibility granted by the world but intrepid inner stamina: a willingness to keep the channels open, to stay tuned to what is coming through, and then bravely bring it into form again and again.

The long view is not about distance.
It is about duration.

A note about the exhibits going forward: The current show is the first of the three Long View exhibitions taking place at Suffolk University Gallery this year.

The Long View #2 — Dec 8, 2025 – Jan 12, 2026
Prilla Brackett
Carla Munsat
Barbara Grad
Elaine Spatz Rabinowitz

The Long View #3 — Mar 2 – Apr 3, 2026
Sharon Kaitz
Alyson Schultz
Jo Ann Rothschild
Maggi Brown

(Photo: Suffolk University

(Photo: Suffolk University)

(Photo: Suffolk University)

(Photo: Suffolk University)

(Photo: Maggie Stark)

(Photo: Maggie Stark)

Artist’s Talk, October 16, 2025. From left: Audrey Goldstein, Deborah Davidson, Ellen Rich, Julia Shepley, Deborah Barlow, Maggie Stark
(Photo: Lauren O’Neal)

(Photo: Lauren O’Neal)

(Photo: Suffolk University)