Felice Newman

Felice Newman was born in New York City in 1956. She co-founded Cleis Press in 1980, a vanguard of queer independent publishing for 35 years. Having spent decades shaping and pruning words, she brings an editor’s sense of economy and revision to her painting. Newman was inspired to begin painting in Provincetown during her stays on Captain Jack’s Wharf as she watched the sky, land and sea trade their colors back and forth in an endless dialog. Her first influences were Mary Giammarino and Harry Folsom, whom she studied with in Provincetown and New York.She lives with her wife in Palm Springs and in Provincetown.

Newman began painting “flatheads” during the summer of 2013. These are odd, abstracted figures, always revealing some aspect of the gender variance she sees in herself. Calling them self-portraits (“See the resemblence?” she teases visitors), she delights in her own authenticity, encouraging others to greet their gender and sexual identities with exuberance as well. — HUTSON GALLERY, Provincetown