A landscape painter in the tradition of 19th-century luminist painters, Joseph McGurl is a founding member of the New American Luminists. He was the youngest artist ever to be designated as a Copley Master by the Copley Society of Boston, which gave him the John Singleton Copley Award. He is an elected member of the Guild of Boston Artists and is a winner of the Guild's Grumbacher Gold Medallion. Much of his painting is done on Cape Cod.

McGurl was raised in Quincy, Massachusetts and studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art, the University of London summer program, the Boston University Summer program in Florence and with Boston artist Robert Cormier.

Source:
Tree's Place Gallery, Conference booklet, "Artist Panelists from the 2004 Conference on Representational Painting".

Joseph McGurl was born on February 4, 1958, in Needham, MA, and grew up in Quincy (1963-), the second of five children of church muralist James McGurl and nurse Evangeline Johnson.

He studied with Ralph Rosenthal in Saturday classes at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Massachusetts College of Art (Bachelor of Fine Arts, 1976-1980); University of London Summer Program (1978); Boston University Summer Program, Florence, Italy (1979); and figure painting with Robert Cormier of Boston (1986-1987).

He was a member of the Guild of Boston Artists and a Copley Master, Copley Society of Boston.

Awards include Salmagundi Club (1993); First Place Medal (1990), Ripley Award (1997) at the Guild of Boston Artists; John Singleton Copley Award (1989), Best of Show & Juror's Choice Award, Copley Society, Boston.

Positions: U.S. Coast Guard Licensed Captain; Yacht Captain of Charters and Deliveries, Maine to Caribbean (1982-1986); Instructor, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (1981); Art Teacher, Braintree, MA public school system (1981); Muralist, James McGurl Company, Quincy, MA.

One-man exhibitions include Alfred J. Walker Fine Art, Boston, MA (1991); Trees Place, Orleans, MA (1989, 1990, 1992); Robert Wilson Galleries, Nantucket, MA (1996); Hollis Taggart Galleries, NY (1995); Cape Museum of Fine Art (1996).

He is married to Patricia Sullivan of Rhode Island, 1988-. Two sons, James ("Max") and Sean.

Joseph McGurl is one of those fortunate artists who found his vocation early and never looked back. Born in 1958, he grew up in Massachusetts in an artistic household, following in the footsteps of his father, James McGurl, an accomplished muralist. Joseph worked with his father while still a child and received his most important instruction from him, learning not only draftsmanship and color theory but also the essential skill of negotiating between preparatory studies and large scale finished works. He subsequently graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and studied in England and Italy.

McGurl has refined the skills learned in his youth and is applying them to landscape and seascape painting. He focuses on working process, which begins with investing endless hours creating plein air paintings he calls field studies, but which are in fact fully worked small oil paintings. They are the only information he brings back with him to the studio, where he selectively transforms some of these works to a larger scale. He comments, "I do not use photography because I feel it diminishes the artistic and intellectual experience of the intense observation and reinterpretation that I find so satisfying. My field studies painted on location are combined with my memory and imagination to form a framework for the larger studio pieces."

McGurl's paintings have been included in several museum exhibitions in Massachusetts, New York, California and Rhode Island. He had retrospective solo shows at the Cape Museum of Fine Arts, The Cahoon Museum of American Art, and the Saint Botolph Club of Boston. He is a participant in the Sea to Shining Sea exhibition that will travel to twelve museums over a four- year period.

Representing Representation, a survey of the most significant realist work being done today included his work in the 2001 show at the Arnot Art Museum, and he was one of the few artists invited to simultaneously exhibit at the concurrent Representing Representation West that showcased western art at the Rockwell Museum of Western Art.

McGurl has been elected to the Guild of Boston Artists and is a Copley Master with the Copley Society of Boston. He has won top awards from both organizations including the John Singleton Copley Award for Artistic Achievement. He has also been the subject of numerous magazine articles and his work has appeared in many books.

Joseph McGurl was born in 1958, in Needham, and raised in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was educated at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Massachusetts College of Art (B.F.A.); the University of London Summer Program; the Boston University Summer Program in Florence; and privately with leading Boston School artist Robert Cormier.

He has won the John Singleton Copley Award from the Copley So ciety of Boston; and the Grumbacher Gold Medallion from the Guild of Boston Artists. He was one of the Forbes American Artists Abroad group, and has been recently featured in American Artist; in Art Ideas; in M. Stephen Doherty's book, Creative Oil Painting; in Driscoll and Skolnick, The Artist and the American Landscape; and in Harris and Lyon, Art of the State: Massachusetts.

His work has been included in museum and art club exhibitions (including a solo retrospective) in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and in major commercial exhibitions from Boston and New York to San Francisco. He is a founding member of the New American Luminists. McGurl is a featured artist in this year's Marine and Coastal Art Exhibition. He has participated in several group shows at Tree's Place including The New American Luminists (1998, 2000, 2003), On Location, Coast to Coast: Small Works by Nine Americans (2001), and Marine and Coastal Art (2002). He has work in the current traveling Sea to Shining Sea exhibition (scheduled regionally for the Cape Cod Museum of Art, May - July 2007).