Gary Koeppel: Skyline
Inner Space Fine Arts, North Reading, MA • innerspace-fineart.com • November 4-December 16, 2023
Inner Space Fine Arts opened its doors just a few weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown, in March 2020. While owner and director Allyson Paladino was planning for an uncertain future, artist Gary Koeppel was sitting in his Roslindale, MA, studio, gazing out his window at the everchanging Boston skyline. Although they didn’t know it yet, their paths would cross when the now-bustling Inner Space gallery agreed to show Koeppel’s work in Skyline this fall.
Koeppel was struck not just by the beauty of the skyline, but by the feelings it elicited. “There were so few people out on the roads at that time,” he shared. “There was that sense of isolation that I think we all felt, and I had a strong sense of that even looking out at this skyline.” Seeing Koeppel’s series does indeed conjure those feelings of distance and isolation that came with the 2020 shutdown. And yet, there is also a deep appreciation and love for the city that is made clear in the care he shows bringing it to life.
No two pieces in the series are the same, although each of them depicts the immutable shape of the city set against the innate changes of the natural sky. Two paintings based on photographs taken at almost exactly the same time, nearly a year apart, carry entirely different tones and colors. January 14, 2022, 5:47 p.m. is drenched in the familiar pink-and-orange light of a setting sun. A few colorful lights can be seen in the foreground where shadow has cast that part of town in early night. December 30, 2022, 5:46 p.m. is all blue and gray, except for the shining golds of the setting sun reflected against the skyscrapers.
Koeppel has been a working artist for more than forty years. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he discovered a love for oil and plein air painting. He has been exhibited throughout New England and New York and has pieces in collections in the U.S. and Europe. “He has a painterly approach to the realism of a scene, and he gives it a sense of heart and spirit,” said Paladino.
— Autumn Duke