Claribel Cone

About Claribel Cone in her own words

I grew up in New York. My parents were both professional classical musicians and had studios and a music school in Carnegie Hall for 35 years…waking up to musical practicing and composing inspired an approach to how to study painting…

My brother, Johnny, and I were often left at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when our parents went to lunch with friends. The rule was that we could not leave the Egyptian section. Johnny was three years older and in charge, even at age 10 and I was 7. Once “nanny Johnny” was climbing on a huge Sphinx and a guard yelled, “hey kids get off that or you’ll be sorry!” but never asked “Where are your parents?”

Hours spent in the Egyptian section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art deeply influenced my painting and the amazing collection of ancient glass from Egypt and Rome impacted the current exhibit about ancient glass.

I was named after Claribel Cone (my father’s aunt), the famous art collector. Claribel the first and her sister ‘Etta Cone have their own wing at the Baltimore Museum of Art called the Cone Wing. The Cone collection has an amazing amount of Matisse paintings. The sisters were friends with Matisse and Picasso.

Inspired by French art and music, I attended the New York Studio School and was taken to study anatomy by drawings bats at the Museum of Natural History (as bats dressed in tuxedos and capes have a very human like anatomy)

I work in abstract and figurative ways and also paint children’s paintings.