Lesley Vance "Untitled," Courtesy FLAG Art Foundation

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views, Contributor

New York’s FLAG Art Foundation has announced what sounds like a plush artist perk: an inaugural summertime Hamptons art residency program (assigned the catchy acronym SHARP) for 2011. Lucky Los Angeles-based painter Lesley Vance has been named the first SHARP recipient.

The program supports emerging artists by providing a studio and living space for six weeks in a private farmhouse in seaside Sagaponack, Long Island.

The Hamptons have long been a refuge for New York artists. Back in the pre-air conditioning days,  when land was cheap, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s Springs home and painted splattered studio in was part of a larger East Hampton artists colony, which included fellow Ab-Exers Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and others. Andy Warhol also owned a waterfront estate in the surfers’ enclave, Montauk.

Represented by L.A.’s David Kordansky Gallery, Lesley Vance’s has been featured in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, as well as at the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, and The Suburban, Chicago. Inspired by 17th century Spanish still-lives, Vance dramatically stages objects and then photographs the arrangements. From these images, she creates abstracted and sensual paintings that retain the essence of the traditional still-life.

Located in Chelsea, the FLAG Art Foundation is a contemporary non-profit art exhibition space which features three to five guest-curated shows each year. Shows are free and open to the public.

FLAG’s current exhibition, on display until May 26th, includes new works by German-born artist Josephine Meckseper and Gerhard Richter’s abstract 98-painting Sinbad series. The space was established by collector Glenn Fuhrman in 2008.

Lesley Vance "Untitled," courtesy FLAG

Lesley Vance "Untitled," courtesy FLAG