About

Christopher Chippendale is an observational painter based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was born in southern California and received his training as a painter at Massachusetts College of Art and Boston University, where he took his BFA and MFA respectively. Chippendale holds a previous BA in French and French Literature from Marlboro College, Vermont. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, and is represented by Soprafina Gallery, Boston.

In addition to his work as an artist, Chippendale has published critical essays on art, curated and juried many exhibitions, and had a distinguished professional teaching career. He has been a member of the Painting faculty at Mass Art for twenty-seven years. He currently serves as Area Coordinator for Mass Art's Painting Department.

Chippendale's paintings are based in perception and reflect an implicit trust in what his eyes actually see. Paradoxically, however, what he sees is both fluid and changeable. As Plato suggested, appearances are fundamentally unstable and relational, subject to distortion both from without as well as from within. This paradox interests the artist because the problem of establishing what is true is central to his work.

Chippendale works in a modernist tradition of perceptual enquiry and representation based upon the raw data of sight. His is an approach to painting based more in finding than in making, in perception more than preconception. His paintings reflect an engagement not with the nameable world of objects and things, but with the less effable, "abstract" world of changing conditions and relationships which he seeks truthfully to portray.

See his full CV here: Downloadable PDF

Christopher is also an advising board member of Woodsy, an affordable wooden furniture company.