RETROSPECTIVE ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOSEPH SHEPPARD
JULY 12 to OCTOBER 11, 2025
Cumberland, Maryland
RETROSPECTIVE ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOSEPH SHEPPARD
JULY 12 to OCTOBER 11, 2025
Cumberland, Maryland
"A reincarnation of the Renaissance artists ..." La Nazione Magazine, Florence, Italy.
Joseph Sheppard, born in Owings Mills, Maryland, is a celebrated realist painter and sculptor known for his classical technique and expressive realism. A graduate of MICA and Guggenheim Fellow, he taught painting and anatomy there from 1960 to 1975. His public commissions include Baltimore’s Brooks Robinson bronze, the Pope John Paul II Monument, and the Holocaust Memorial, along with murals for the Baltimore Police Department and National Aquarium.
The Ferleman Gallery is honored to host a landmark retrospective celebrating the life and work of Joseph Sheppard, showcasing his enduring legacy as one of America’s foremost realist painters and sculptors.
I want to thank you both for your efforts at my opening. The gallery and it's accomodations are first class. I have shown around America, in Italy, Germany and London. And your gallery is first class.
Joseph Sheppard
Experience the Ferleman Gallery
The Ferleman Gallery is a cultural landmark in the heart of historic Cumberland, Maryland. Founded by Thomas and Rebecca Ferleman, the gallery was born from a vision to create more than just a place to view art—it’s a place to live it. Here, creativity is not confined to walls or stages but woven into every experience. From bold visual art and transformative live music to immersive cultural moments, Ferleman Gallery exists to elevate daily life through the power of shared connection and inspired expression.
Tour Local Artist Studios
The Ferleman Gallery is proud to be the starting point of the Western Maryland Studio Tour. Located in the heart of the Arts & Entertainment District, the gallery will feature artwork from many local artists.
Winter Wonderland
In partnership with the Western Maryland Watercolor Society, the Ferleman Gallery presents Winter Wonderland. Local artists capture the magic of the Appalachian season as the Gallery transforms into a snowy showcase of winter’s beauty.
Pathways to Becoming (encaustic, 30x30)
This painting layers violet and rose tones with glowing turquoise ladders and radiant windows. The composition suggests portals and passageways, with luminous rectangles hinting at destinations beyond. The wax medium creates depth and translucence, balancing structure with dreamlike atmosphere. This work evokes transition and growth—an exploration of thresholds, illumination, and the unfolding journey of becoming.
The Right Track (encaustic, 10x10)
In this work, Yacovelli employs bold hues of orange, magenta, and yellow, intersected by a luminous ladder that ascends toward a glowing threshold. Layers of encaustic wax create depth and texture, where structure dissolves into fluid fields of color. Suggesting direction, movement, and possibility, the piece reflects Yacovelli’s ongoing exploration of pathways and transformation—an intimate invitation to consider the steps we take toward becoming.
Thresholds in Red (encaustic, 30x30)
Yacovelli immerses the viewer in a field of crimson and scarlet, punctuated by glowing windows and a central doorway-like form. Layers of encaustic wax create both solidity and translucence, where passages seem to open and dissolve within the surface. The work evokes ideas of entry and crossing, suggesting liminal spaces that bridge the seen and unseen—a meditation on movement, transition, and the power of thresholds.
Ferleman Gallery is pleased to announce Echoes of Light, a solo exhibition by painter Wendell Myers. This timely presentation of thirty-two works arrives at a moment when collective uncertainty and division underscore the need for visual clarity and quietude. Through luminous explorations of color, form, and nature, Myers invites a return to sensorial presence and contemplative stillness.
In a period marked by political tumult and social fracture, Echoes of Light offers more than aesthetic pleasure—it functions as a visual refuge, a meditative space in which the natural world speaks in chromatic whispers and radiant gestures. Trees shimmer in defiance of despair, skies stretch toward hope, and flowers bloom with unapologetic vitality. Myers' paintings articulate a counterpoint to chaos, restoring attention to beauty, resilience, and the subtle harmonies of lived experience.
Highlights include Garnet Hill (2025), a commanding topography of deep reds and shadowed greens that suggests both internal and external landscapes of reckoning, and Pink and Yellow Flowers (2025), where compressed spatial relationships become metaphors for constraint, adaptation, and renewal.
Wendel Myers, a former potter and passionate jazz enthusiast, brings a deep appreciation for spontaneity, improvisation, and the beauty of unexpected outcomes to his painting. Inspired by the dynamic interplay of color and form, his process mirrors the essence of jazz—listening, reacting, and creating simultaneously. Much like working with clay and glazes in a kiln, where elements can be influenced but never fully controlled, his approach to painting embraces spontaneity and discovery. His abstract landscapes are rich with personal history, reflecting memories of places he has lived and traveled—from the vast great plains and serene lake country of his youth to the rugged Carolina mountains, sweeping seascapes, the desert Southwest, and the timeless landscapes of Europe.
Abstract Meditations on Memory and Place
Echoes of Light explores the evocative interplay of color, texture, and form, reflecting Wendell Myers’ immersive engagement with the natural and atmospheric nuances of the French countryside.
Chromatic Dialogues: Intersections of Red and Form
Pink and Yellow Flowers
Titled Pink and Yellow Flowers, this exuberant painting merges gestural abstraction with floral motifs, featuring vibrant pink, yellow, and white blooms erupting from a vivid green vessel against a saturated fuchsia background. Energetic splatters and expressive brushwork activate the canvas, creating a dynamic interplay between spontaneity and form. The high-chroma palette and layered textures evoke a post-minimalist sensibility, transforming the traditional still life into an immersive, affect-driven composition that privileges the materiality and movement of paint over strict representation.
Flowers in Purple Pot
Flowers in Purple Pot, is a radiant composition that channels a joyful vitality through its interplay of bold color and kinetic brushwork. Bursting from a rounded lavender vessel, clusters of crimson, lemon-yellow, and blush-pink blossoms pulse with energy against a vivid tangerine background. Myers employs dynamic splashes, drips, and layered pigment to blur the boundaries between representation and abstraction, conjuring a sense of spontaneous movement. Eschewing traditional still life conventions, the work leans into visual exuberance and chromatic intensity, offering an immersive, sensory experience grounded in color, rhythm, and expressive immediacy.
Blue Vase on Green Table
This composition radiates playful energy, with splashes of vibrant red, green, and pink foliage emerging from a cobalt blue vase atop a tranquil green table. The layered textures and expressive splatters create a dynamic interplay of controlled precision and spontaneous movement, evoking a celebratory ode to color, form, and the joy of creation.
Interview with Chuck Fischer & Mark Lester
The Form & Function Exhibit featured an interview with Dr. Thomas Ferleman, Chuck Fischer, and Mark Lester, exploring the balance of beauty and utility in their work. Fischer shared insights on his sculptural designs, while Lester highlighted the tactile artistry of his pottery, inspiring audiences with their creative
CHUCK FISCHER
Dimensional Harmonies: The Intuitive Forms of Chuck Fischer
Chuck Fischer’s work operates at the nexus of spatial form and conceptual narrative, where each piece unfolds as an exploration of material transformation and visual syntax. His practice engages with layered forms and textures, merging intuitive design with a meticulous attention to detail. Through a dynamic interplay of structure, color, and medium, Fischer's creations transcend their physicality, inviting viewers into a realm of aesthetic resonance and interpretive fluidity.
Rooted in a dialogue between traditional craft and innovative expression, Fischer’s art redefines the boundaries of two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. His compositions pulse with rhythmic geometries and interwoven planes, cultivating a balance between chaos and order, spontaneity and precision. This synthesis underscores his ability to evoke both immediacy and timelessness, rendering his works as immersive environments that challenge and expand the parameters of contemporary artistic discourse.
MARK LESTER
Transcendent Vessels: The Functional Artistry of Mark Lester
Sculptural form by Mark Lester blur the boundaries between aesthetic expression and utility, embodying the essence of functional art. Its earthy, textured surface contrasts with the smooth, convex lenses embedded throughout, creating a compelling interplay between raw materiality and polished refinement. These reflective elements not only distort and capture light, engaging the viewer’s perception, but also hint at the object's dual existence as both a contemplative artwork and a functional piece.
The work’s contours evoke themes of containment and transformation, suggesting a purposeful design that transcends pure decoration. Lester’s piece invites interaction, serving not only as a meditation on the interplay of light, shadow, and texture but also as a functional object within the everyday. This duality underscores its place at the intersection of utility and artistry, demonstrating Lester’s ability to imbue practical forms with conceptual depth and sculptural elegance.
Experience the Ferleman Gallery
Mark Lester
Chuck Fischer
Chuck Fischer
This sculptural relief by Mark Lester explores the tension between creation and fragmentation, offering a meditative study on the themes of accumulation, repetition, and deconstruction. The work features an array of white ceramic forms resembling abstracted vessels, their uniformity disrupted by fractured and incomplete shapes. Each element within the composition maintains a tactile intimacy, showcasing the organic irregularities of hand-formed clay.
Chuck Fischer
Chuck Fischer
Chuck Fischer
This work by Chuck Fischer embodies a dynamic fusion of dimensionality and narrative, utilizing fabric-like folds and angular structural elements to create a layered, sculptural painting. The piece is dominated by a richly draped crimson "curtain," evoking the fluidity and drama of textiles while rendered with precise, painterly technique. Below, fragmented wooden frames extend outward in a deconstructed rhythm, exposing inner compositions of smaller, framed elements.
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