Noah by De Forest F. "Rib" Ribley  (PA/NY/CT, 1912-1975), oil on canvas, signed "Rib" on back, circa 1940s, professionally cleaned, unframed - 32" x 22" 
 
Rib was primarily an architect, then a poet, playwright and painter. He also was a veteran of WW2.  He authored a book of poetry titled Butterflies aren't Birds, which was published posthumously in 1976.  He was born in Pennsylvania and studied painting and architectural design at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He later majored in humanities at NYU. There are 2 works by Rib in the Monkey Arm collection, both featuring his distinctive little men and both featuring dark religious allegories, which seems to have been a theme in his work during the 1940s, as compared to his works in the 50s and 60s, which were abstract and brighter. The back cover blurb of Butterfiles aren't Birds sumarizes his poetry as such: "... [I]n his poems as well as in his plays and paintings he manifests himself as a person of real individuality who seeks to know and understand the whole totality of life and his being, to relive life in a manner that is new, to create for himself the possibility of a fresh impact ... Reading these poems one discovers how hidden De Forrest Ribley was within his writing and how oblique were his angles of communication. He used his poems as outwardly conventional disguises within which he comes very close to us and subtly, almost unnoticed, confronts our hearts and minds. At first reading one can go on without being aware of these communications-just as one can be oblivious of a chicadee fluting a brief call as we walk through the woods and whose greeting we only hear later in recollection-or those strangely familiar faces appearing within the wavering interstices of summer foliage and silently speaking and gesticulating to us as they become visible in the midst of our reveries. These poems are like that, hauntingly original and deceptively simple." This perfectly sums up his work as a painter.