Rob has worked as a professional artist for over fifty years, grounded in one of America's most distinguished lineages of painting. His training began at the Malden Bridge School of Art in 1968, continued at the Albany Institute of History and Art, and culminated with a BFA from the Boston University School of Fine Arts in 1973.

In 1971, Rob came to Provincetown to study with Henry Hensche, Charles Hawthorne's assistant and the keeper of his color theory. Hensche founded his own school, The Cape School, in 1933. Rob returned throughout the 1970s and later lived in various of Hensche's studios through the 1990s. Color, light, and atmosphere, as passed down through the Hawthorne/Hensche tradition, remain central to everything Rob Longley paints.

Rob's work spans idyllic Cape Cod landscapes and seascapes to the energy of urban streets. In the mid-1990s, he began developing a second, distinctly contemporary body of work, and he has deliberately chosen to pursue both directions, finding that each satisfies something the other cannot.

Longley was awarded the prestigious Greenshields Foundation grant in 1976 and a grant from the New York State Arts Council. He has exhibited widely in the Northeast and has been teaching at the Cape School of Art since the early 1990s.

Syd came to painting from two directions at once: an early grounding in Abstract Expressionism — Kline, Pollock, Rothko — followed by a pull toward the luminous color of the French Impressionists. She holds a BFA in painting and spent nearly fifteen years studying at the Cape School of Art under Rob Longley, Lois Griffel, Camille Przewodek, Hilda Neily, and others, absorbing the color and light theories of Henry Hensche.

Syd's other lifelong passion was flying. She earned her private pilot's license at 17, built a career through flight instruction and corporate aviation, and in 1977 began flying for the airlines. She retired as a Delta Air Lines Captain in 2012 after 35 years aloft.

Those years in the cockpit became the foundation for Syd's Flight Level Series — aerial landscapes in oil and cold wax that render what she witnessed from 36,000 feet: cloud formations, high-altitude light, sunrises, and sunsets seen from above the weather. The works range from semi-representational to fully abstract, and are typically large in scale to convey the grandeur of that perspective. The silver floater frames are intentional — an echo of the aircraft itself.

Syd's plein air work is painted on location in natural light, almost entirely with a palette knife, which keeps color clean and immediate. She paints primarily on hand-sanded Masonite board.

Syd Hale currently teaches at the Naples Art Center, the Cape Cod Art Center, and the Cape School of Art in Provincetown.