painters     

Artist Statement

Saira Austin

Eyes, imagination, dedication and passion make a visual artist.

My work of the last fifteen years has looked to ancient landscapes and sacred sites and at the enormous sense of presence and mystery these sites command. Now I am looking at the garden-landscape, likewise with its unanswered mysteries.

I view these garden landscapes through my eyes, yet wonder what it might look like to species who have a greater capacity to see beyond the visual spectrum of we humans: the bees, insects, and birds. What does the additional visual sensitivity to ultra-violet light make their world look like? What can we tell by observing the movements and interactions of these other species in the garden landscape?

What lies beyond the edges of our ‘visible’ world but yet still exists ‘visually’ in ‘real space’? What do we not see in the ‘empty spaces’?

These are some of the questions I ask as I make drawings and paintings.

painters     

Artist Statement

Gail Robertson

What I like about being a painter is the process of seeing/becoming empty, and without thinking painting from that place. Have you ever noticed that no one asks a writer to paint about their writing?

Gail Robertson lives and works in Mill Valley, Callifornia. Her work reflects the depth and influences that life in different cultures can stimulate. These paintings are mystical testimony to the Bay Area’s moody climate and to her travels.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Blair Folts

Inspired by the power of landscape, I have been drawn to study the natural layers found on the Earth through sketching. This has in turn led to my interest in layering my paintings and prints in order to capture natural and cultural evolution. Landscape holds the power of Nature and the Earth. In traveling to remote places, I have searched for the ancient power of “landscapeness” and how people move and live in that space. The sketchbook is a constant companion and allows me to record impressions often not captured by the camera. Once home in my studio, twigs, dirt and even “squished bugs” from the site have helped me travel back to these lands and have inspired different kinds of layering in my work. Through my work as an environmental activist, I am continually inspired by the power of language and words to effect change, and as such have drawn upon them as form in my work. Incorporating words as texture in printmaking, I have found a way to combine layering to speak about the cultural global divide as societies change and become more homogenized.

Through personal journals, photography, printmaking and painting I seek to depict the issues we are facing today and suggest ways we can make new decisions about how we live. How can we learn to think beyond our own neighborhood? How can we learn to better understand the impact our actions in our own homes have on people thousands of miles away? Can we learn to look at the world from someone else’s perspective?

How can we find our own personal voice and place in a rapidly changing landscape?

painters     

Artist Statement

Wendy Ketchum

My work is inspired by the play of light on natural forms, and the interesting patterns that result. I am particularly drawn to the abstractions created by the close-up environment versus the more traditional landscape with horizon line, and many of my works reflect this “micro view”. As both a painter and a printmaker, I enjoy moving back and forth between the two mediums, allowing each to influence and complement each other in the expressions of my ideas.

Painting allows me to be more physical and gestural and is a respite from the often meticulous aspects of plate making. Though I usually have a preconceived idea in my mind for my paintings, I enjoy getting lost in the process of applying paint to create color and light.

Printmaking allows for endless possibilities of mark-making, textural elements, and “happy accidents” that often result from the unpredictable nature of the process. Though I enjoy the craft of carving traditional woodblocks for editions, I have recently developed a more intuitive method of working an image through layering – of color, form, and technique – to produce one-of-a-kind prints. Because the work is more process driven, the final image evolves with each successive run through the press. My current prints are created by overprinting multiple plates on absorbent Clayboard instead of paper, and adding encaustic wax for depth and translucency. I am intrigued by the ambiguity that results from looking through competing layers of transparent images.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Mark Stewart

Drawing has been a central part of Mark Stewart’s life from a very early age. In high school his natural gift led him to a drafting class and from there to Architecture while at Texas A&M University. It was there in the mid 70’s that Mark began to paint, experimenting with watercolor technique and closely studying the work of Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. He graduated from A&M in 1975 with a master’s degree in Architecture and a serious commitment to his artistic avocation of watercolor painting.

As a painter, Mark is a realist who is nevertheless intrigued by the mystery behind reality. His subjects, whether human or inanimate, seem imbued with a quiet pensiveness – a patient wait for the thing within the thing to show itself. Mark's watercolor paintings neatly marry an elegant specificity with the shadows of suggestion, in keeping with the soul of reality.

painters     

Artist Statement

Jeanne O’toole Hayman

A painter and printmaker for more than twenty years, I began developing my printmaking skills at the Mason Gross School of Innovative Printmaking at Rutgers University and have been honing them ever since.
As a member and past President of an artist run co-operative printmaking studio, The Peregrine Press in Portland, Maine I have participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Maine and elsewhere. Our portfolio of prints is in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Portland Museum of Art, The Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, and Colby, Bates and Bowdoin Colleges.
In printmaking and drawing my focus is solely on the figure, my favorite studio time is working directly from the model.
When I am not making prints, I am painting landscapes and seascapes in oils. Stimulated by the amazing coastline and light in Maine I began painting the ancient rocks of the shoreline as soon as I arrived in 2001. Now I am working on interpretations of the water and sky and atmosphere that surround my island home.

painters     

Artist Statement

James Kao

July, 2011

Hokusai envisioned thirty-six views of Mount Fuji. Cezanne gazed at Mont
Sainte-Victoire with fresh energy over sixty times. I, too, am looking for my
earthly motif that ranges into the heavens.
I am dreaming of white mountains cast in numberless shades of summer green.
-----
July, 2010

Chinese writing and primitive art-forms bewitch, and I am drawing towards all that
is child-like, animal-like, and angelic.
-----

February, 2008

I sense an artistic responsibility to grasp, reprocess, and re-present our world.
This is also my privilege.

-----

June, 2006

I paint quietly and slowly.

-----

May, 2006

My paintings and drawings record direct and repeated observations. Each
reiteration of similar motifs marks an increasing intimacy with the world and
moves an observational practice closer to a private meditation. My comfort in
familiar objects and their spaces manifests in an aging collection of citrus fruit—
once-fresh oranges are now desiccated, discolored, misshapen, and hard to the
touch; and my desire to escape the mundane impels me toward the uncanny.

 

painters     

Artist Statement

Christopher Thompson

My recent paintings owe much to the Pennsylvania countryside. John Muir, one of our Nation's greatest conservationists, understood Nature's profound beauty as inspiration for the artist: " We find in the fields of Nature no place that is blank or barren; every spot on land or sea is covered with harvests, and these harvests are always ripe and ready to be gathered and no toiler is ever underpaid." (John Muir)

Many of my paintings are 'expressions' of the woodlands, streams, pastures and rolling hills that characterize the Piedmont region that stretches from Maine all the way to Georgia. Every day I am always on the lookout for a color or horizon to speak to me and sometimes they do. Many times, I accidentally stumble into some wonderful place that stirs something inside me. The work sometimes begins from a graphic thumbnail sketch or digital photograph. I bring these images to my studio and work our the size and the medium.

These 'landscape expressions' paintings begin in front of the canvas in the studio. The act of painting draws out these expressions only, of course, if my muse is cooperating that day. Many of these paintings are less representational and show more of an abstract style. The abstract qualities in the paintings include bolder brush strokes, palette knife swathes, paint hues and impastos and may at times weigh more heavily on the actual physical play of paint on canvas than a straight contour rendering of the object.....

Christopher A. Thompson has been an artist all of his life and has exhibited widely in the United States. Recent painting awards include the Wayne At Center's Quita Broadhead Award and the Award of Excellence at the Squirrel Gallery. At eighteen years of age, Chris won the National Scholastic Gold Medal in painting and has received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Along with a teaching assistanceship, Chris was a warded a Ford Foundation Fellowship during his graduate studies.

Chris is an ardent open space advocate. He has worked for many years on Land Conservation projects that have provided inspiration for his paintings.

Artist Statement

Bunnies

My work emanates from a background in drawing and painting but mostly as an observer of the world. I rely on visual information such as how people and animals move, their body gestures and expressions to create my sculptures. Every animal has it’s own personality and my goal is to highlight these traits.

My selection of animals is always expanding including both domestic and exotic. All of my animals are individually hand-built in stoneware. The finish firing varies from raku, smoke, or saggar over colored slips and stains.

By manipulating the firings I influence the desired results, but the lick of the flame and smoke leave their own signature. Just as animals have their own personalities, the firing process adds unique and exciting traits to the sculptures.

Artist Statement

Lisa Houck

Boston artist, Lisa Houck's work is best described in the following article from the Boston Globe by Christine Temin: "Lisa Houck's eye-popping watercolors and oils are flat and densely patterned, with the various sections appearing pieced together, like crazy quilts. Hers is a crowded, cacophonous landscape inhabited by flowers, fish, trees, numbers, raindrops, symbols, and dots like those in aboriginal paintings, all competing for your attention." Houck's landscapes are more about pattern and color than land. Most important to her work is her powerful sense of design.

Houck is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) and Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (MA/MFA). Her work has been extensively exhibited in galleries and museums and she is widely published. Houck's pieces can be found in numerous collections including The Boston Company, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Fidelity Investments, the Fogg Art Museum, Coopers and Lybrand, and Massachusetts General Hospital to mention a few.

objects and glass     

Artist Statement

Shandra McLane

Fire and Ice
Luminous, strong --- clear, direct --- delicate, yet bold.
These complementary opposites in glasswork are evi-
dent, both in the material itself, and in the design and
process I employ in my studio. Light, color, form and
texture are combined at its essential core.
I come to glass by way of an interest in Scandina-
vian and Modernist design cultivated in my twenties.
For me, the pleasure of the design, fabrication, and
finished piece, are the framework of a life filled with
beautiful objects which make our lives richer and
more meaningful. In this Scandinavian tradition, one
finds an understated refinement, which is stylishly
unobtrusive and accessible by all.
Norwegian designer Johan Verde wrote, “My philoso-
phy is to work with complex simplicity.” I would echo
that observation. I appreciate that most Scandinavian
designers maintain the belief that for a product to be
successful, it must harmonize poetry and practicality,
so as to satisfy both the heart and the mind. I strive
to create work that embodies elements of joy, integ-
rity, practicality, and, of course, aesthetics. It is my
hope that you and your family enjoy these pieces as
much as I enjoyed creating them.

painters     

Artist Statement

Alice Morse

Alice Morse lives and works in Spain. She has exhibited her work in Mallorca ,Barcelona and Madrid. In the United States she has shown at galleries in Washington DC, Art Miami and now at Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery. First a student of art in Spain at Artes y Oficios in Mallorca, Morse then studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. in 1982. Returning again to Washington in 1986, she studied at the Washington Art Studio and the Washing Art and Music School. She returned to Mallorca and in 1995 finished her studies at the Escuela de Dieno I.D.E.A. She has been working and living in Spain form most of her career.

Morse's work on first glance takes us back to an era long lost to history. Shapes in plaster remind of bones or fossils cracked with age while lying on backgrounds that could be ancient stones. Her work is about texture, spaces and voids. Morse seeks to capture a reality made up of "the dynamics of the alive and dead, still and flowing, emotional and rational, noisy and silent, light aggression and rest-reflection". Her work is as engaging to the mind as it is to the hand.

"Alice Morse's work resonates with the primitive dream-time of an aboriginal world. She seeks to capture the essence of the beginning of life, the instant of creation." James Rose, BBC Engineer, 2006

objects and glass     

Artist Statement

Ronnie Gould

My work emanates from a background in drawing and painting but mostly as an observer of the world. I rely on visual information such as how people and animals move, their body gestures and expressions to create my sculptures. Every animal has it’s own personality and my goal is to highlight these traits.

My selection of animals is always expanding including both domestic and exotic. All of my animals are individually hand-built in stoneware. The finish firing varies from raku, smoke, or saggar over colored slips and stains.

By manipulating the firings I influence the desired results, but the lick of the flame and smoke leave their own signature. Just as animals have their own personalities, the firing process adds unique and exciting traits to the sculptures.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Michael Rich

Michael Rich, graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, (BFA 1991) and the Savannah College of Art and Design, (MFA 1997) is currently a professor of art at Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island. Time spent around the waters of Nantucket Island and the hills of Cortona, Italy helped to shape a love and interest in landscape and natural rhythms of color that remain very much a focal point in his work today.

A dedicated practitioner of yoga, Rich is influenced greatly by Eastern philosophy and art in an approach to nature and landscape as a wellspring for spiritual investigation and meditation.

“My paintings and drawings of the past decade have explored through the language of abstraction the notion of place. Places once visited, invented or discovered, vaguely take shape in the colors of space and light.

The gray skies of Providence, the expanses of sky and sea surrounding Nantucket Island, the warm of New England Fall, are subjects now mined in my work. In an effort to understand my own place among these fleeting images, I seek a language that draws on personal history as well as the history of painting while forging a new path between abstraction and the realization of the image of place.”

Michael Rich is exhibited in galleries across the country. His work is contained in museum, corporate and private collections.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Anna Jeretic

Anna Jeretic lives and works in the countryside outside of Paris, France. She is a painter and a print maker. Her paintings seem to tell stories as whimsical animals interact with each other or sometimes with humans in charmed settings. The works are soft and invite us into Jeretic's allegorical world.

A trip to Africa inspired Jeretic to paint lions, tigers, elephants and birds that she saw there. These animals are also the subject of a series of etchings she has created. This sensative work narrates the existence of the wonderful creatures found in the wild.

Jeretic has exhibited in Paris and her work is found in private collections in the United States and abroad.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Kate Higley

Kate Higley began printmaking in the early nineteen eighties while living and working in Saudi Arabia. In seven years, she traveled extensively around the middle and near east, spending time in both the desert and the mountains, particularly, the Himalayas. These visual experiences shaped her aesthetic, in particular, the sight of stark land masses as seen from a great height, often airplanes. Upon her return to the United States, she studied and taught biology, receiving an interdisciplinary master's degree at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. This foray into the biological is deeply rooted in Kate's work as well. She and her family made their home in Washington, DC in winter and Wolfeboro, NH in summers for many years. In Washington, she taught art at a private girls' school where she maintained a printmaking studio on the campus. In those years, she was also affiliated with the Corcoran College of Art as a student and lab technician. Her work is in two of the Corcoran College's print portfolios. In June, 2007 Kate moved to New Hampshire full time. Her work is in both public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad.

I am experimental by nature and frequently combine several printmaking methods in one work. In my years in the Middle East, it was often difficult to obtain materials. Shortages were the birth of that tendency. I will re-use plates and layer new imagery over old or cut up substrates to create more work. I keep "failed" prints for years and then try another method or two as an overlay. This system is fraught with potential disaster, but I like walking that line. I print myself into corners and then find ways out….sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Things can get lost in the layers and then found again. In my recent work, I am expressing my sense of ambiguity between the macro and the micro. Leading the viewer to see the continuity found in the visual structure of mountains, coastlines, river deltas, rolling hills and muscle tissue, plant cells, even gray matter is the goal. Lately, I think about being aloft and birdlike structures seem to fly in from nowhere. They are probably harbingers of another body of work waiting "in the wings."

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Margaret Barnaby

Multiple Plate wood block prints by Margaret Barnaby

Margaret Barnaby, a 30- year studio art jeweler, painter, printer and sculptor, exhibits paintings and prints at the Volcano Art Center and Volcano Garden Arts in Volcano, HI, Carega Gallery in Sandwich, NH, and Living Arts Gallery in Hawi, HI. Her monoprints, represented by Pelavin Editions in New York City, are in many corporate collections, including those of United Parcel Service and Texas Instruments.
In 2002 the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts purchased the watercolor ‘Pink and the Inner Child.’ Recent woodblock prints were awarded the John Charlot prize in the 2006 Honolulu Printmakers show, and the Honblue purchase award in 2007. In 2008 the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts purchased “Kink” a multiple plate woodblock print. It is currently on exhibition at the Hawaii State Art Museum in Honolulu, HI.
Her small editions of woodblock prints use both Japanese and western approaches and techniques. Each print requires that at least four plywood plates be hand-carved. The plates are then inked and printed in succession on an etching press.
“The natural world around me has always been the starting point of my work, whether it be jewelry, paintings or prints. My new series of prints uses the ‘alala, endangered Hawaiian crows, as a metaphor for hope and change. I was able to see the birds (of which there are only 67) at the Keauhou Bird Center in Volcano.
Multiple plate woodblock printing satisfies my love of craft and provides a vehicle to experiment with color, composition and content.”


sculpture     

Artist Statement

Rebecca Robinson

Artist statements have always been a daunting process for me. Largely, I think, because I have always been more comfortable making my statements in my art. My most fluent language is three-dimensional and my thoughts are more easily stated by my hands rather than my pen.

My current work in stone has grown out of my intrigue with the fluidity and luminescence that seems to me to be inherent in every piece of alabaster. I am still amazed at the depth of color that lurks just beneath that rough and dusty layer of outer stone. The contrast between the polished surface and the natural state can be startling and I often try to preserve at least a small area of outer stone in my pieces. Perhaps it is the influence of my earlier figurative work, but the polished surface of the stone is reminiscent to me of soft skin and I believe there are also echoes of the power and grace of the human form in my current work.

I have recently become quite taken with the idea of treating stone like fabric. I find the incongruity of knotting, twisting and weaving an unyielding stone quite appealing. The translucent nature of most alabasters also adds to the weightlessness of the pieces.

Stone, by its very name, implies weight and solidity. My hope is that the viewer's notion of stone has been challenged by my work. Stone is capable of loft, grace and luminescence.

sculpture     

Artist Statement

Madeleine Lord

Massachusetts artist Madeleine Lord gives new life to metal and steel scraps found at her local dump. The transformed pieces become flowers, dogs, fish, birds, clothing and anything her grand imagination can conceive of. To visit her studio is to encounter old refrigerators, stoves and dishwashers awaiting new life. Her blowtorch becomes her pencil. Some of Lord's surfaces remain enameled as they were; others she paints with generous brush strokes and vivid colors. Her work is free standing or can be hung on walls or nestled in corners. Her results are energetic, intriguing, playful and simply ingenious.

An excellent painter, Lord is a graduate of Smith College (BA Studio Art) and The Shawsheen Vocational Technical School where she studied welding. She has exhibited throughout New England and her work is included in many public and private collections. Commissioned pieces can be found throughout the United States.

photography     

Artist Statement

Dale Lary

For many years Dale Lary's passion has been to photograph the natural landscape in Central and Northern New Hampshire. After retiring from a high-technology company, Lary turned his hobby into his profession. His photographs are often captured while on long hikes into the interior of the state with camera equipment on his back. The results are both stunning and majestic.

Lary's primary interest is to photograph subject matter such as waterfalls, brooks, ponds, lakes, wildflowers, autumn foliage, wildlife, domestic animals, gardens, local events and architecture.

All photography is digital and all prints are done using an eight-color wide-format inkjet printer. Images are available in various-size prints as well as digital computer files.

photography     

Artist Statement

Anderson B English

Photographer Anderson B. English, originally from New Jersey, received his BFA from Ohio University and his MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Throughout, his images have straddled the line between editorial (photo reportage) and fine art photography. Bodies of work range from the passing and celebration of life to people in their environments, from the solemnity of a trainer and his boxers to photographs of the natural landscape.

English is an instructor of photography at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and is a professional photographer. He has exhibited nationally in galleries and museums and is included in numerous private collections.

On view at Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery are a series of landscapes entitled "Retrieving the Scattered." This body of work is a "study of the tradition and evolution of landscape photography from the documentation of the land to the recording of unspoiled grandeur to the interaction of human's attempt to control landscape, for better or worse." This work asks the viewer to think. It relies on the unpredictable: the found object in an unspoiled natural scene to initiate questions and thoroughly engage the viewer.

photography     

Artist Statement

Jacques Beauchamp

Born in Paris, France in 1949, Jacques Moury Beauchamp started making images at an early age and discovered the practice of photography as a teenager. In New York, Beauchamp studied commercial photography and then opened his own studio, working as art director and photographer for magazines, ad agencies and record companies while continuing to devote time to his fine art photo series. Upon his return to France in 1984, he started with two other photographers one of the first photo studios to experiment with computer assisted imagery.

Beauchamp's latest fine art series are taking the form of installations with projections, musical soundtrack and other multimedia elements. He currently teaches photography and digital imaging in France and the United States. Beauchamp's photographic illustrations have been published in more than twenty countries worldwide. His fine art series are regularly exhibited in Europe and the United States.

"Chateau de Paille" is an invitation to look at the agricultural landscape of the Touraine Region in a new way. This photography series emphasizes the architectural dimension of straw stacks erected every summer in the fields of Central France. These constructions can take in everyone's imagination the appearance of castles or of cathedrals. The stacks are captured using architectural photography techniques, a field that Beauchamp has been exploring for many years. This series also creates a link between the farming and artistic worlds, two groups of people living in the region but who seldom have a chance to meet.

sculpture     

Artist Statement

Alex Rheault

Maine artist, Alex Rheault, is comfortable working in different media. Her paintings, drawings, and photographs have been seen at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery since the 1980's when Rheault was a member of the Washington, DC stable. Most recently on view at the gallery have been several new and creative installations: "Apron Rules","See Through Decompositions" and finally "Best in Show". These works have been fresh, original as well as challenging.Visitors to the gallery have been intrigued by these pieces that are fresh, original and challenging. Rheault is also a published cartoonist whose work appears regularly in a Florida newspaper.

Rheault is a graduate of L'Academia di Costume e Moda, Rome, Italy (Art history and costume), Parsons School of Design, New York City (BFA in illustration), Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City (Millinery design), Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine (Intermediate and advanced photography; stop-motion animation), SALT Institute for Documentary Studies, Portland (Documentary Photography) and Vermont College of Art, Union Institute and University, Montpelier, VT (MFA in Visual Arts).

Excerpted from her Artist Statement:
My desire to make art derives from longings to experience and interact with different materials, to expand, situate and free ideas and thoughts thorough these materials. I consistently explore process, which is intrinsic and essential to my work. My work may include an interactive aspect, because I value the participation of others and want to offer the opportunity to experience the work beyond the four walls. Seeing, memory, cultural preconditioning and imagination all contribute to my work.

objects and glass     

Artist Statement

Robin Dustin

One thing they can’t teach you in undergraduate or graduate art classes is whether you’ll enjoy working and selling in your chosen medium. In my case, I majored in the entire Art Department at Southern Illinois Univ. – Pottery, Weaving, Metalsmithing, Sculpture (including welding), Printmaking, a few Art History courses and even Oil Painting. I did a minor in Education. My mother wanted me to be able ‘earn a living’ if I couldn’t make it as an artist. Both my weaving and metal instructors at SIU were graduates of Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and encouraged me to do graduate work there. Before going, I spent a summer at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina where I studied Enameling and Lapidary (cutting cabochons and faceted stones) and did more weaving. At Cranbrook I got an MFA in Weaving, with a minor in Metalsmithing.

While living in NYC and getting to ‘the last $10 in the bank,’ I figured I’d better start working with my own two hands. With the addition of a little common sense, all my previous experience of working with tools and materials made it fairly easy to do carpentry, contracting, building, and yes, some teaching for most of my ‘earning’ years. When I first moved to Sandwich in ’78 I set up a shop with a jeweler friend and sold woven items. They sold well enough, but I soon found I really did not like producing items for sale and liked even less doing commissions. At that point I went back to my building skills and worked for a contractor for almost ten years, then became director of the historical society before retiring.

About four or five years ago I found myself driving to Kennett High School in Conway once a month to sit in on the Woodturners meetings. I didn’t have a lathe, but surely did enjoy seeing what others were making on their lathes. After about a year of this and taking a couple of short courses in turning at Kennett, I decided to buy a lathe. That was in the summer of 2004. Several attempts at turning, getting the gouge caught (there’s a reason why they’re called gouges) and scaring the pudding out of myself, I was ready to sell that Delta lathe. It wasn’t until late 2006 that I got some simple instructions from a friend and started my career of woodturning with a half inch scraper. The fellows at the club meetings were impressed when I finally had some pieces to show, even though they made fun of me for using a scraper all the time. I said I didn’t care what tool I used as long as it allowed me to turn wood comfortably. They had to agree. Since then I’ve gained considerable skill with bowl gouges (not skews though) and have upgraded to a larger, heavier lathe (“Puff” the Magic Powermatic Dragon) that allows me to mount a big chunk of wood I’ve chainsawed from my property and start turning it slowly to get it balanced, then make a big bowl, platter or whatever. It’s nice to work in a medium I really appreciate and solve problems from an artistic point of view.

I do wish I had been introduced to the woodturning world much earlier in my life, but I’m here now and I’m happy turning bowls for myself and if someone wants to buy them, that’s great.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Sallie Wolf

Sallie Wolf is from Oak Park, Illinois and Sandwich, New Hampshire where she has summered since she was a child. She is a graduate of Brown University, (BA Anthropology, honors, Phi Beta Kappa) and The School of the Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois (BFA). Her landscapes of Squam Lake and the surrounding mountains remind us of the tranquility found in Japanese scenery. Working from sketches made on sight, Wolf combines charcoal drawings with watercolor and other drawing media. The result is soft and rich. Her subject matter is often a multi-sheet panoramic view, though each sheet stands as a painting by itself. The work is sold together or separately but the result is as breathtaking as the landscape it represents. Wolf's work is featured in public and private collections throughout the United States.

My father bought the red house in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, when I was seven and I have spent almost every summer since looking out at the wonderful view of Squam, or sitting on the beach, staring across the lake at the same mountain ridges, the same boathouse, the same trees. As I sit on the beach I sketch. And at the end of my vacation I take my sketches home to Oak Park, a suburb directly west of Chicago. All of the mixed-media drawings were done in my studio in Oak Park, during the winter, from sketches done on sight in New Hampshire. For me they are about distance, dislocation, longing, loss, and memory.

When I began translating my sketches into larger, multi-sheet works I intended to work strictly in watercolors. I had drawn up the scene in graphite on four sheets of paper, but found I had forgotten my brushes. Determined to make a start of some kind, I began to work the drawing in charcoal, creating a value study. The next day I came back with paint and brushes and worked into the charcoal. I added white acrylic gesso to get back to lighter values, and worked back and forth between watercolor, charcoal and gesso until I had a surface and colors I felt were complete. That was the start of this series of drawings.

Enlarging a sketch forces me to seek out big brushes (2- to 4-inch flat brushes, including house-painting brushes) to try to reproduce the simplicity of the brush strokes, but the surface is worked much more full than in a sketch. And because I work from very small sources there is little detail and that pushes the larger drawings towards abstraction. I work across the multi-sheet panoramas all at one time, but I strive to have each sheet capable of standing on its own. I find that my color choices are influenced by the totally different palette of Chicago in the winter. New Hampshire in the summer is full of blue light, and a deep green. Chicago is gray and cold and a much yellowier green. The acrylic gesso adds a very cold white or gray and adds to the feeling of distance and dislocation.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

CC White

The use of color, shape, line and gesture is my attempt to translate ephemeral thoughts and feelings into abstract images which I hope will provoke strong visceral reactions in the viewer.
Current events, music, the plight of the environment, women’s issues, dreams, prayer, body sensations and spiritual traditions are all starting places for my work. I am aware that staying out of my head, and in my heart and body, results in more feeling and substance in my work. I like to move, even dance, when I am painting, and much of my work mirrors the dialogue between mind and body. I am intrigued by depth and layers, density versus clarity, action versus stillness, and try to visually evoke the tension between excitement and fear. Intuition and Curiosity are my guides.
I honor the importance of the Shadow, or dark side, as well as the occasional flash of the Divine. I am constantly aware the painting is sacred work for me, but at the same time, I try not to take myself too seriously.

painters     

Artist Statement

Jennifer Van Cor

After graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with a diploma in studio art, I pursued a career of painting and teaching art. I showed my work briefly in the Boston area and then moved to Maine and finally New Hampshire. With my children off to college, I resumed my painting and have begun showing my work in local galleries.

The landscape has always tantalized my senses; the smell and feel of wet grass, the sound of leaves in the wind, the shape of a shadow through a broken limb. And with it all, the ever-changing color; a universe of color. Color at the tips of my fingers.

Each stroke and dip of the brush pushes my senses onto the surface, and if I am listening closely and truly, the life of a landscape fills the painting.
As my landscapes progress, they become more about the flow of energy, the experience of a lifetime of color, shape and feeling. They dip into abstraction while still holding onto nature.

Poetry has been another way to touch the landscape. Words mix color and senses through imagery that is very much like painting. When the two are combined, I feel I have painted a poem.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Andrew Tavarelli

At first glance Andy Tavarelli's work smacks of the exotic, of far away lands, hard to get to places--places his paintings invite us to travel to. Tavarelli is a modern day "itinerant painter." In his backpack he carries both sketchbook and watercolors to record his impressions and his experiences. The Far East, Mexico and the Philippines are places he has traveled.

"Float World" is the most recent body of work in watercolor on paper. Geishas and/or Kabuki characters interact with each other or with figures of days past. A World War Two Soldier and a Geisha, or a Kabuki player with a Cha Cha girl tweak the viewer's curiosity. Vivid color, an interest in pattern and fabric, the intricacy of their dress and hair are integral parts of the composition. Characters seem to be on stage, the viewer is the audience. We are drawn into the relationships between the feminine and the masculine, the east and the west, dreams and realities. The result is both intriguing and engaging. Painted after a series of large oil paintings on canvas, "Float World" invites the viewer to travel into Tavarelli's world.

A graduate student of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Tavarelli has no formal training in art. While there he worked in the school's art gallery where the director "opened his eyes to art and creativity." Since that time his paintings have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries around the United States. His work is contained in many private and public collections including The Boston Public Library, Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC and Sonesta Hotels to mention a few. Tavarelli is currently Adjunct Associate Professor, Studio Chair at Boston College.

painters     

Artist Statement

Kathy Stark

Since mid-1970 I have been fascinated with patterning and the visual image created by repeat images. In the 1980's I designed a tool to make a painted repeat linear bar. I used this tool to create a series of profusely colored works. During the late 1990's my palette had become more subtle until finally reaching white. For eight years I worked on a series of white paintings. These works evolved into paintings using a variety of mixed media, having highly-textured surfaces, and eventually with words appearing. My current works use ink, graphite, colored pencils, watercolor, acrylic paint, glazes, a variety of wallpapers, decorative papers, photographs, and text. The focus continues to be on pattern and repeat motifs to create the final piece.

Viera Da Silva "...about my process--I cannot explain it to you; and even if I could are there people who really wish to explain themselves?"

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Marian Purviance

Marian Purviance, a native of Philadelphia, grew up in Somerset County, New Jersey, graduated from St. George's School, in Newport, Rhode Island, and earned her BA at Sarah Lawrence College in 1983 in Fine Art and Languages. After living in Italy for 18 months as a painting student in Florence, Italy, Purviance returned to Rhode Island in 1984 and has lived in Providence ever since. She began her career as the owner of Prime Coat--creating one-of-a-kind painted furnishings for private clients throughout New England. In 1999 she began working as a consultant with numerous nonprofit organizations and other key players in helping to establish Providence to be what it is considered today--"America's Renaissance City." She also divided her time as a freelance graphic designer and most importantly as a mother to her 2 children. In 2004 Purviance returned to her true calling--as an artist--and now works from her home studio creating paintings and works on paper. In 2007 she had her first solo exhibition in Middletown, Rhode Island. Her work is also in numerous private collections and has been shown in selected group exhibitions.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Liz Prescott

An award-winning Maine artist, Liz Prescott, is a graduate of University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont (BA), Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine (BFA) and Vermont College of Norwich University, Montpelier, Vermont (MFA). Prescott's work has been exhibited widely throughout New England.

This body of work is inspired by the birth of my daughter. The medium is acrylic and the pieces are very small and intimate, much like Sadie. Intended as a playful tribute as I anticipated her arrival, they are carefully executed, both a visual testimony to the intense love and thought required to raise a child and a manifestation of my ongoing investigations of color, geometry, and mapmaking.

The rock cairns have metaphors attached to them and many stories have been shared with me as I painted the stacks of rocks collected in my studio. I am particularly drawn to the "circle stones," those that have lines of quartz running through them. These are said to be lucky, leading the journeyer full circle on a path to completion.

painters     

Artist Statement

Elizabeth Nelson

Vermont artist, Elizabeth Nelson, is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BS) and the University of North Carolina (MA) at Chapel HIll. Her paintings have been exhibited throughout the United States with a concentration on New England. She as been the recipient of numerous awards for her painting and her work is in both public and private collections.

Currently Nelson uses one or more photographs that are applied to her canvas. She then paints the continuation of the scene she has photographed. At first glance the viewer doesn't realize that the photograph is a part of the painting. On closer look the photograph becomes more obvious and the viewer is amazed at the artist's ingenuity and talent. Nelson has discovered another version of deception in art. Her brush stokes are confident and color identical to those captured by the lens.

painters     

Artist Statement

Laura Marconi

Art to me is an expression of an inner world. It is a search with endless questions of life's mysteries. And with new answers there are new questions, and a new personal growth. It is a difficult and challenging task.
My work is personal and intimate. I tried to capture the moment in time and my feelings.
I look for ordinary elements and I stretch them; the use of lines and colors reflects my inner thoughts. I like to have a sense of space in my paintings, to me it symbolizes human nature. Mystery is also important, it leads to more open interpretations.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Lise Lemelland

My work comes from an ongoing fascination with pattern in its many forms and related theoretical discourses. I am captivated by the worlds of color and pattern revealed in the decorative arts from other cultures. Indian, Turkish, South and Central American carpets provide the structural foundation for the paintings. European lace, embroidery and Japanese kimonos are some of the sources of imagery and repetitive motifs, and have become an integral part of the patterning in my most recent work. In a broader sense, my painting is a response to certain preconceptions about decoration. By using overtly ornamental designs, I am embracing the decorative, making it both content and form.

Many of my paintings have animal elements such as snakes and dragons that construct another layer of pattern. The dragon drifts in and out of art and mythology of the past and present like a recurring dream. It has enormous power as a symbol and yet stays nebulous in form and in meaning. Dragons of the West are with few exceptions evil, hideous creatures symbolic of spiritual desolation and the dark side. Eastern dragons are the complete antithesis: benevolent, elegant, revered demi-gods symbolic of spiritual or meteorological import and often immortality. In China, the dragon originates from a matriarchal society and is closely associated with the serpent. While it is moody and unpredictable, it also represents creation; and in both eastern and western cultures it is tied to knowledge and wisdom. The dragon in my paintings is a metaphor for this duality of spirit. It is self-referential, symbolizing the internal and external conflicts of being human.

By combining and recontextualizing these various images, lace, and textile patterns, my intent is to generate new meaning. At its heart, this work is about beauty and embracing decoration. It is about visual splendor and the celebration of pattern and color.

http://www.liselemelland.com/

painters     

Artist Statement

Kay Ives

ARTIST SATEMENT

For several years my work has focused on natural phenomena: water, flowers, rocks. My art veers between abstraction and realism using luminosity and transparent layers to evoke a sense of spirit.

I use abstraction and realism in the same piece, often dividing the canvas into panels. I want to convey that the mind’s eye is not singular, but richly layered. We view things simultaneously in fragmented and nuanced ways. My work reflects the intuitive, logical and spirit minds. The natural chaos of the natural world is framed by the geometric logic of straight precise lines. The intuitive mind is found in the atmospheric transparent washes.

I am attracted to nature because it is always changing. You can’t pin it down. Water can be clear, calm and blue and then suddenly it changes to white spray and raging force. It is both reflective and transparent. The same is true of flowers: they never stand still. They are metaphors for the ephemeral nature of our own lives and minds.

painters     

Artist Statement

Sky Hoyt

Things I have seen, collected and remembered coalesce into idyllic settings. Much of my work is centered in the garden, whether it's a solitary figure surrounded by flowers in an interior that opens up to the outdoors, or it's figures together in a lush garden filled with blossoms, birds and animals. They are places where ideas of nature, order, peace and the unexpected can be explored. My work is both figurative and abstract. In each painting the whole is most important. The negative spaces vie with the principal objects for attention . The whole effect needs to be of movement, fullness and rhythm. Juxtaposed shapes evoke the movements of nature, such as in the rustling of leaves in the wind. The forms blur the boundaries of reality to invite escape into a world of shapes, colors, pleasure and fullness.

To begin a painting I begin with a sketch directly on the canvas of some primary forms. Sometimes the whole painting takes its direction from a simple flower shape that I noticed on a walk. More objects and spaces emerge then fall away, sometimes leaving altogether if if the space isn’t filling up with a balanced energy. It’s an exercise in letting go of the rational or expected in order to encourage serendipitous accidents.

http://www.skyhoyt.com/

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Lisa Houck

Boston artist, Lisa Houck's work is best described in the following article from the Boston Globe by Christine Temin: "Lisa Houck's eye-popping watercolors and oils are flat and densely patterned, with the various sections appearing pieced together, like crazy quilts. Hers is a crowded, cacophonous landscape inhabited by flowers, fish, trees, numbers, raindrops, symbols, and dots like those in aboriginal paintings, all competing for your attention." Houck's landscapes are more about pattern and color than land. Most important to her work is her powerful sense of design.

Houck is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA) and Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, (MA/MFA). Her work has been extensively exhibited in galleries and museums and she is widely published. Houck's pieces can be found in numerous collections including The Boston Company, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Fidelity Investments, the Fogg Art Museum, Coopers and Lybrand, and Massachusetts General Hospital to mention a few.

http://www.lisahouck.com/

painters     

Artist Statement

Jennifer Hodges

Born and raised in Holderness, New Hampshire, Hodges developed a natural connection with the landforms and waterways of the White Mountains. Since leaving Squam Lake in 1984 to attend UNH she has completed an MFA at Yale, lived in New York City and is currently settled in Maine. Hodges' paintings are founded on experimentation. She uses house-painting brushes, glue spreading trowels, window squeegees, and paint rollers to make precise and specific forms that represent places in the landscape. The paintings shown at Patricia Carega this summer are works from a series of mountain paintings. Her work is shown also in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Boston, and Los Angeles.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Frances Hamilton

Frances Hamilton is a painter and collage artist whose work has been exhibited widely in New England for over 25 years. Her images are intimate, rich in color and often inspired by memory and dream.

The Squam Lake Series is based on a lifetime of visits to a friend's summer home near Center Harbor, New Hampshire. In this series "All Around the House," the artist travels from kitchen to bedrooms to porches, patterned in sunlight and always suggesting the nearness of water, the sound of the waves. Accompanying this exhibit is a color catalogue and essay by University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth curator Lasse Antonsen.

What might seem most familiar here is the sense of place, family and traditions created through the journeys back to a summer home. The overlay of time, spiritual regeneration, birth and death are all implied in the visible evidence of simple wooden tables and fishing gear, the play of light coming through flowered curtains. There is a paradoxically unchanged experience in the effects of many changing lives returning to a familiar and beloved setting. Squam Lake is renowned for families that have protected this culture of respectful return and the home which is fondly painted by the artist is one of many such shared campsites where the cultural archeology of past and present offers rich material for contemplation.

http://www.franceshamiltonart.com/

painters     

Artist Statement

Anne Garland

My art is a personal response to the natural world, where I have always found nourishment, inspiration, and joy. I use drawing, painting, and printmaking to visually express my intrigue in all that nature holds, each offering exciting and unique processes, tools and techniques. When painting, the landscape is most often my subject. I love being IN the landscape. The plein air process allows me to inhale all that surrounds me. At the end of a session, even if the painting is not completed, the experience of wading in the river, smelling and standing in the sweet field grasses, or sitting in patterned light of the woods is rewarding. When working in the studio, I am able to recall the landscape. Protected from the bugs and rain, I can work larger and longer, but it is not the same as being there. Through printmaking I enjoy exploring subjects that are more intimately seen, things I can manipulate in my hands, or extract from digital images and drawings. It is an exciting medium, offering endless possibilities in interpreting my intrigue with nature. For example, the thin and sensitive lines of an etching can suggest the fragility of a decaying leaf, while the boldness of a woodcut can convey the scuffling form of an armadillo rustling through the underbrush with it’s snout. Whatever medium or process I use, I am interested in letting the image evolve, becoming something unplanned and surprising in the process of trial, error, and patience.

Anne Garland's work is found in the following public collections: The New York Public Library, University of New England, The Portland Museum of Art, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Colby College Art Gallery, and The Farnsworth Museum of Art.
For the year 2010 she has earned The Pace House Residency in Stonington, ME awarded by the Maine College of Art, and she is the Buffalo National River Artist in Residence, Harrison, Arizona.
Her work is also contained in numerous private collections.

painters     

Artist Statement

Gay Freeborn

As a painter I have been searching, as we all do, for that which touches my heart. I have painted all of my life; from childhood horses, college figure drawing to images of those in distress, sad people, beautiful people, dogs and their people. I began breeding Labrador Retrievers on my farm in Maine and watching them, noticing their curves, their motion and their devotion, finally I have found an urgency to my brushstrokes that were not evident before. Using oils on canvas as my medium, I portray the dog with love for the animal as my driving force. The space that surrounds the subject is as important as the figure itself as they swirl, sit, sleep or stare back at me from the light engulfing them. The Dog, unconditional and unpretentious sits at my feet as I paint and I don't think I could ask for anything more.

painters      sculpture     

Artist Statement

Kathryn Field

For the past 18 years Kathryn Field has produced large-scale steel sculptures that explore images of animals, landscape and the human form. Since 1999 she has also painted in watercolor, encaustic and oils. Her most recent work celebrates her interest in painting and sculpture. Now the painted landscape in oil, moves across the flowing surface of laser-cut stainless-steel plates instead of the traditional canvas.

Her new six-foot-standing panels invite the viewer to walk around and view the changing images on each side of the panel. In the work titled "Fish" the bodies of Coe appear to move back and forth across the surface of the panel creating a sense of motion.

The process of creating these new works begins with drawings, simplifying landscapes and figurative studies into bold positive and negative patterns. Then the artist works with an engineer to translate the drawings into a CAD program that can be cut on a laser cutting bed. Once the plates are laser cut, the artist bends and shapes the waste materials. These shapes are then welded into new locations onto the panels creating an undulating three dimensional surface. Once the blank metal canvas has been created, the painting begins. Painting in the round and on a shaped surface is a challenge that fascinates the artist.

Using the laser-cutting techniques, Field has created a 60-foot steel fence, 18-foot-tall outdoor public sculpture as well as small intimate sculptures for private homes. By merging the painted surface with sculpted forms, Field imagines the possibilities of expanding such works for garden spaces, large wall reliefs and room dividers.

painters     

Artist Statement

Michael Doyle

Michael Doyle's landscapes are intimate renderings of rural scenes. The frames also fashioned by Doyle remind of antiquity while the work inside is contemporary in energy and execution. The work is rich and uplifting. It is peaceful. It asks to be remembered and revered. Doyle works in oil on canvas or board. He is a master of painterly technique with generous brushstrokes and ample paint. Working in both New Jersey and also New Hampshire, the paintings are a pleasant journey into Michael Doyle's world.

Doyle's work can be found in both private and corporate collections here and abroad. He has exhibited throughout the United States. He currently lives and works in New Jersey.

work on paper     

Artist Statement

Amy Stacey Curtis

In the year 2000, Amy Stacey Curtis (the Maine Arts Commission's 2005 Individual Artist Fellow For Visual Art) set out to install multiple solo-biennial exhibits of specific themes. Each exhibit requires audience perpetuation, comprises large-in-scope interactive works, and takes place in a different Maine community's vast abandoned space. The drawings and paintings Curtis creates to support her installation are in private collections internationally.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Stoney Conley

Alston Stoney Conley lives and works in Massachusetts and in Maine. Currently he is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Fine Arts Department at Boston College. A career painter, Conley has taught and lectured in New England and in New York. He has been the recipient of many awards and distinctions for his work. His paintings are contained in both Museum and Corporate collections.

For many years Conley was interested in the fresco technique. Plaster is heavy, hard to move and easily damaged. He turned to painting on board, canvas and paper in oil and watercolor. Landscapes and Waterscapes of Venice, Italy and Maine will be on exhibit at the gallery this summer. These paintings reveal an interest in form and light.

The Venice paintings are works done perhaps of the same scene at different times or the same time on different days. One becomes aware of the differences of the sky, nuances of the forms the buildings take and water at dawn or in the evening. Venice is an elegant port. These paintings echo a quiet reverence for their subject.

The Maine paintings evoke a love and respect for the the beauty of coastal Maine. Mist and fog creep into the landscape as one imagines an early morning in a cove by the sea. The forms of trees delicately share the canvas with fingers of land and quiet water. Again the artist has spun an enchanting tale.

painters      work on paper     

Artist Statement

Ashley Bullard

Ashley Bullard lives and works in New Hampshire. A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Bullard's canvases demonstrate her passion for painting. Color, and texture embue each painting with the energy the artist feels for her subject. Her last series of work has been inspired by world events. Using the metaphor of the clothes line, the viewer is left to his or her her own conclusions. A talented young artist, Bullard's work continues to grow in depth and execution.

Though a young artist, Bullard's work has enjoyed a very enthusiastic response. Her work can be found in both private and public collections throughout the United States.

painters     

Artist Statement

Barbara Brady

My work has evolved in style and form and is essentially a narrative of personal experiences. In these paintings, each brush stroke is part of a story, expressing emotion and vitality. My work is rooted in memory, explicitly gestural and more complex materially, incorporating paper, plastic, cardboard and other materials. It is through the process of experimentation with technique and materials that I continue to explore the expressive potential of abstract painting.

I received a B.F.A. (1980) from Rosemont College and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1980-82). My work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions, national juried shows and in galleries throughout Maine and Pennsylvania. My work is held in private collections internationally.

painters     

Artist Statement

Donna McLeod Balsan

A native of New Hampshire, Donna Balsan lives in Paris, France. She has studied trompe l'oeil, faux marbre, faux bois and patines at the Institut Superior de Peinture en Decoration. Her work has been exhibited in France most specifically in Aix en Provence. Her commissions include: Renaissance Cruise Lines, the Hilton Hotel in Munich and a number of private homes in the United States and abroad.

Balsan's paintings are charming and fresh. They are painterly excursions into the essence of Parisian life.