Morpeth Contemporary is pleased to introduce the paintings of Hopewell artist and Princeton Day School English teacher, Tom Quigley. On view are both pre- and post-pandemic works. The exhibition title, ”Up Never Give,” recounts his personal journey through Covid.

up never give (long-covid works)

i remember sitting in a twentieth-century art class my senior year at bucknell as image after image clicked through the slide carousel. i took crazy notes, wrote a ten-page paper on mondrian's boogie woogie, and crammed hours in the library cruising through stacks pondering how artists changed styles across time. the final involved identifying the artist and explaining the why--based on five slides of paintings i had never seen. i think i took this class to hang with a friend (the plan), and i ended up finding what i wanted to do--be a visual artist (the non-plan). but i didn't paint and i didn't sculpt--and i was terrible at sketching. i was really a poet. 

that was exactly forty years ago this spring. for the next two years in grad. school at brown, i focused on my two-line poems--stapling them to telephone poles and staging readings and painting two-liners--black letters on white plywood--and staking them into the ground outside the science building. i even looked into renting a billboard on 95 for a year; i hoped to sleep on the scaffolding and paint a new, two-line poem--365 days in a row. 

so what have i been doing since 1986? teaching at pds (since '90) marriage, two children, five gerbils, two cats, one dog, lots of music collecting at prex, and cutting the lawn in hopewell (since '94). whenever i could, i dove down into the cave of my basement studio, clicked on eight white operating lights, and tried to merge my poetry and love of phrasing into something visual--searching for my voice, my style--the dream still inside. 

i have had long covid for more than a year now, and am just returning to teach english (and other life lessons) at pds. the covid lockdown gave me space--only on good days--to disappear and create. and i walked our dog, dune, in the sweet and healing open spaces of hopewell. and i kept finding ruth walking her dog as well. and we had time--to chat and share plague stories. and this became the genesis of a show--happening only when the universe decided it should be so. 

most of my paintings are happy accidents. most of my work has multiple layers of paintings that failed underneath. i guess--like my grandfather who lived through the depression--i repurpose lots. and my best stuff usually arrives after i stop trying--or after i 'm stuck. and even if i still have visions right before sleep--and boxes full of notebooks crammed with sketches for paintings and outdoor sculpture and crossed out two-line poems--i always know what painting is next and why--so the sketches and words end up dusty on shelves and boxes--or on a thumb drive i can't find. 

what shows up when i paint ends up changing into something i never expected. it's about losing control--and about living forever--and trying to freeze time--just for a bit. i live with my paintings--and rearrange them on my walls to stay fresh--and i watch and wait to see which ones are strong enough to keep living--to stay as they are. 

i want my students at pds to be surprised every class, to forget the clock, to forget they are even in school, to learn something stunning (on a great day) about applying a text or a personal essay or sudden-fiction creation to their lives. but long covid and the pandemic made days blablahblah way too often. but if you are reading this, like me, you made it through. congrats: up never give. 

i hope my art show stuns you. and, if not, i'll try again.