Chris Plunkett
Urban Light
Chris Plunkett creates contemporary oil paintings inspired by the urban and natural landscapes he encounters throughout New England. His cityscapes transform familiar streets, buildings, bridges, and waterways through bold color, textured brushwork, and shifting light, turning everyday environments into atmospheric and visually charged scenes.
While much of Plunkett’s work is rooted in Boston and its surrounding neighborhoods, his practice also extends to coastal and rural landscapes. Working both in the studio and en plein air, he captures fleeting changes in light and weather, balancing recognizable places with an expressive approach that allows atmosphere, color, and paint itself to shape the image.
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Selected Works
Each work is an original oil painting. Click individual works for details or purchase.
Available works typically range from $500–$2,100.
About the Work
Plunkett looks to the places he regularly encounters as the starting point for his paintings. Boston streets, bridges, neighborhoods, waterways, and surrounding landscapes become subjects through which he considers changing light, atmosphere, season, and the experience of moving through a familiar environment. Rather than treating the city as a fixed backdrop, he captures its shifting character from one moment to the next.
His paintings are built through expressive applications of oil paint, with textured surfaces and visible brushwork giving the scenes a sense of movement and immediacy. In his Red Sky series, grayscale cityscapes are placed against vivid fields of color, creating heightened environments that move beyond straightforward observation. His plein-air paintings similarly translate direct encounters with the landscape into energetic studies of light and atmosphere.
Across urban and natural subjects, Plunkett is interested in the emotional possibilities contained within recognizable places. A street at night, a river at low light, or a winter shoreline can become a setting for reflection, allowing viewers to bring their own memories and narratives to landscapes that are both specific and familiar.
Biography
Chris Plunkett is an American contemporary painter based in the Boston area. He received his BA in Visual Art from Plymouth State University in 2004, studied Art Education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design from 2005–2007, and earned his MAE from Boston University in 2013. His practice is informed by both his experience as an artist and his background in art education.
Plunkett has exhibited extensively throughout the Boston area, including group exhibitions at Urbano Gallery and the Arnheim Gallery at MassArt, and received a solo exhibition at Boston City Hall in 2015. His work has been presented in numerous Fountain Street Gallery exhibitions, including somewhere i have never travelled…, Upended, Sharp Focus, Read Between the Lines, Breaking the Rules, and Recreating Nature. His paintings are held by collectors throughout New England, New York, and California.
Inquiries
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