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Artists of the Brandywine Valley

Excerpts from a new book by Catherine Quillman.

(page 4 of 5)

Ed Loper Jr.

A self-styled Cubist, Edward Loper Jr., is a celebrated artist in his native Wilmington. Early in his career, Loper studied at the famed Barnes Foundation on Philadelphia’s Main Line. He learned what he calls “a way to see” there, and eventually mastered the art of building form through color and composing complex scenes with little or no preliminary drawing. In his five decades of painting, Loper says he knows how to approach a scene, quickly “scrubbing” in outlines and shapes and “thinking about color later.” An on-site painter, Loper frequently looks for subjects that appeal to his heart as well as his eye. They include scenes along the Brandywine and the streetscapes of Wilmington’s West End, where he grew up. His favorite location is Manayunk, the Philadelphia neighborhood famous for its steep inclines. Lugging his paint box as he climbed up and down the slanted streets of this mini-San Francisco, Loper once found a crooked house to paint.
 

Allen G. Carter Sr.

Allen Carter is a native of Southampton, Long Island, who has lived in the Brandywine Valley for the past 22 years. He maintains a studio in his home in Greenville, where he pursues his “post-retirement life” as a painter of portraits, still lifes, landscape and trompe l’oeil murals. “I knew what I wanted to do—paint—and not just paint, but paint as a classic realist,” Carter says of his return to college for an undergraduate degree after decades working for the international divisions of General Electric and Unisys. Carter’s Old-Master style is derived in part from visiting cities in Europe, where he embarked on a self-guided study of art history. Carter writes, “It gave me the unparalleled opportunity to see some of the greatest architecture of our times and to walk the halls of some of the world’s most renown museums.”
 

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