Beverly Rippel 🕯️

My water pistol and cap gun paintings have been emerging since 1992 (after one of the first school shootings at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, MA) in an ongoing quest for insight into the origins of violence. This body of work grew out of a concern for kids as well as adults using guns as a means of dealing with the problems of everyday life - both regionally and globally. I question if there are obvious as well as subliminal messages we send (to our children) through the ideas and artifacts we simply hand them. I titled one painting, “Common Elements”, quoting President Wm. J. Clinton in his reaction to the school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 as he wondered what these shooters shared in life experiences or psychiatric conditions. I choose to use jelly colored toy pistols in my series as a means of easier access into a viewer’s primal thoughts on gun usage in society and also for encouraging group dialogue that might follow. The pencil in many of my artworks is a stand-in for humanity.

Beverly Rippel is based in South Easton, MA