Allentown resident Lynn Sulpy will display some of her oil paintings at an Arts Council of Princeton exhibit.
By: Marisa Maldonado
ALLENTOWN Lynn Sulpy will paint wherever she can find a safe spot to sit outside, away from cars and, hopefully, the sun. She thinks her 8-by-12-inch paintings of houses and nature can bring more color and a different perspective than a photograph can.
"The camera lens brings things to such a perspective and makes them so tiny, you lose perspective of how big things are," Ms. Sulpy said.
Ms. Sulpy’s perspective of Allentown is the focus of a new exhibit at the Arts Council of Princeton. The Allentown resident’s first exhibit, "In and Around Allentown," premieres there Friday evening. The exhibit of about two dozen oil paintings will premiere at an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Paul Robeson building at 102 Witherspoon St. in Princeton.
Ms. Sulpy, 44, has lived in Allentown for just more than a year and has found the area’s variety and "quaint" character conducive to painting.
"It’s near the farmland I like it’s close enough to urban-ness, but you still get your quiet solitude," Ms. Sulpy said. "The greatest thing about it is that there’s a downtown. I used to live in Jackson that was acres and acres of nothing."
Ms. Sulpy will co-exhibit with Judy Tobie, a Princeton artist who makes three-dimensional sculptures from homemade paper. The Arts Council approached Ms. Sulpy about having a co-exhibitor because the council received so many entries from various artists, Ms. Sulpy said.
For Ms. Sulpy, painting was a longtime passion that life circumstances forced her to stop pursuing full time. She received a degree in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, but chose to pursue a career in graphic design instead. Although she occasionally "dabbled" in mediums such as watercolor, raising a family and career obligations came first for Ms. Sulpy in the years after college.
"I had kids, and I just decided to focus on a career," Ms. Sulpy said. "I guess living in an apartment with two kids, it really wasn’t easy to pull an easel out."
But a 1999 diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma changed Ms. Sulpy’s life. She quit full-time work while she went into treatment for a year and a half. Suddenly she found herself with a lot of free time on her hands and she decided to fill it with an old passion that she had hoped to return to for some time.
"I was putting in 45 hours a week plus commuting," Ms. Sulpy said of her work obligations before the cancer diagnosis. "Suddenly you’re not doing that as much. (Painting) filled a void, and I really enjoyed it."
Ms. Sulpy, who now is in remission, found plenty of inspiration when she moved to Allentown from Jackson in October 2003. She tries to take advantage of the many trees in Allentown when she can, sitting in the shade in locations such as around the Mill Pond to protect her colors.
"The sun can be blinding, so it’s very hard to see your colors," Ms. Sulpy said. "It helps to be in the shade for that reason."
Ms. Sulpy likes to finish her paintings in one sitting. Most of her paintings take between three to six hours to complete.
Although her favorite artists come from the Impressionist and post-Impressionist period, she said she is influenced by everything from 16th-century painters to "a woman my friend knew in high school who is an artist in Lake Tahoe."
Although she considers this her first "real" exhibit, Ms. Sulpy also has exhibited her paintings at the Jackson library.
"Most of the time (at the library) they had the lights off and the door closed to the room where they were hanging," Ms. Sulpy said.
She expects the exhibit at the Arts Council to be better exposure so long as the weather behaves itself for opening night.
"I’m looking forward to seeing them all up on the wall," she said, "instead of thrown in a corner."
Ms. Sulpy’s exhibit is open through Feb. 11. Regular gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

