Art and the making of art has been an integral part of Jodie Wrenn Rippy’s life since childhood. Her earliest cognitive memory of making and sharing art with others was her portrait drawing of young Caroline Kennedy which she promptly sent to the president himself (for which she received a warm thank you from the White House…she was age 10).
Rippy’s work has evolved over the years using media varieties such as oil, watercolor, and collage, as well as new stylistic approaches. Her focus is from a representational perspective. Exciting shapes created by light and color initially attract her to begin a piece. From this point she will begin to create a balance of light and dark that will move the viewer throughout the painting. She is especially drawn to subjects such as landscape and still life and capturing them in oil.
Her venue of painted photographic collage creates areas of space that, while visually being truthful images, are altered to become imaginary sanctuaries and places that one could easily lose oneself.
Rippy’s work is recognized with regional awards and appears in private and corporate collections nationally as well as abroad. She has exhibited at St. John’s Museum of Art, Davidson County Museum of Art, and Fayetteville Museum of Art, and is in the permanent collections of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and Peace College in North Carolina. She is represented by the New Elements Gallery in Wilmington, North Carolina, Tyler White Compton Gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the City Art Gallery of Greenville, North Carolina.
Rippy holds degrees from Peace College and a BS in art education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has studied in workshops with nationally known artists including Wolf Kahn and Ted Goerschner as well as attended the Ringling School of Art and Design in Wildacres, North Carolina. She has painted on locations in Greece, France, Portugal, The Virgin Islands, Spain, and the American Southwest, as well as her local coastal area in North Carolina.
