CARAVAN Board Member Jessica Wright shares her top pick.
Winslow Homer, Breezing Up, 1873-1876, Oil on canvas, 61.5 × 97 cm
I was first exposed to Homer’s work in a course on Modern American Art, and was taken with his exquisite watercolor and oil painting depicting life in New England. This painting captures so beautifully the life and motion of a summer day on the ocean, and the particular quality of light in the sky and on the water. I can almost smell the tangy salty air and hear the crash of the waves.
This work is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Jessica Wright is a specialist in contemporary Middle Eastern art, gallerist, curator and Arabist. She obtain her B.A. in Art History and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. She was previously the gallery director and cultural coordinator for the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, D.C, which focuses on exhibiting contemporary art from the Middle East, along with offering a full range of cultural programming in the form of book signings, film festivals, dance and music recitals, and other cultural events. She most recently served as the Managing Editor at the Center for Public Justice, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C.
Jessica curated CARAVAN’s contemporary Coptic icon exhibition in Cairo titled “The Eternal Eye” in 2012. She has lived in Jordan and Egypt for over twenty years, and is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with her husband and two children. She works as a freelance editor and consultant.