Artists' Gathering

          I am excited to be meeting with my colleagues at Maple & Main Gallery of Fine Art tonight for an evening of socializing.  Up until now, we have all been working very hard to make the gallery the success it is.  We have had little enough time to BE with each other and learn more about each other.  It's a potluck supper, so I'm looking forward to some yummy treats.  I'm taking Swedish meatballs and a winter squash bisque.  On a cold night like tonight, I thought those might be warming.

          Anyway, I'll be telling my artist friends about the paintings that I have in the current show. I've already shown you "The Guardian," a 16 x 20" oil of this ancient tree in Old Lyme. Many artists seem to hesitate to paint too much green, but I love it; it was my dad's favorite color, so perhaps that's one reason I enjoy using it.

          Also in this show is "Lupine, Sunset Hill," another 16 x 20" oil on canvas, which I began in June and finished after we returned home.  Sunset Hill, New Hampshire, has an annual Lupine Festival, and I can understand why:  the fields and roadsides are covered with these incredibly beautiful flowers.  They remind me of Barbara Cooney's children's book about Miss Rumphius, who--in the manner of Johnny Appleseed--is said to have planted lupine seeds all up and down the coast of Maine.  Maybe these in New Hampshire are relatives of those in the Granite State's neighbor to the east.

          It wouldn't be a holiday show for me, if I didn't have a  "Pointsettia" painting to show.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I LOVE FLOWERS--all kinds from tiny bluets in the spring to huge red (or white, or pink, or....) pointsettia blossoms in December.  This is a 4 x 6" oil on canvas.

          Which brings me to the fourth painting I have in the show:  our "Christmas Tree" from last year.  I had so much fun painting it in the semi-darkness of our living room, lit just by the bulbs on the tree.   The finished piece is a 16 x 12" oil on canvas.  It is a tree much like those of my childhood, except the lights are the new energy-saving tiny ones, not the big glass bulbs that my mom and dad used.  Like the trees of my past, all the colors of the rainbow are represented.  No white lights for me.  White lights are classy, but colored lights on Christmas trees bring happy memories flooding back.  (Remember the lights that bubbled?  We never had them, but I always thought THEY were the cat's meow!)  
          Well, we put the Christmas tree up yesterday and strung the lights.  Only a few ornaments are on it so far.  Time to add a few before I head out to the festivities at the gallery.  Merry Christmas, everyone. 

"The Guardian" ...

... is one of the paintings that I have on display at Maple & Main Gallery of Fine Art in Chester. 

"The Guardian" is an original 16" x 20" oil painting.

          This is a plein air painting I began on a day in spring this past year.  That seems so long ago now, when the temperature here in Deep River is 18 degrees and ice is beginning to form on the lake.  All the wonderful greens that surrounded me then have been replaced by winter browns and greys. 

          I have worked on the painting randomly off and on since then.  Perhaps for some reason, I didn't want to let myself be done with "spring" and let it go.  No matter how long that tree has been there or how worn those rocks are that the brook flows over, "The Guardian" reminds me that the cycle of the seasons goes on whether I want it to or not.  However, just a glimpse of this view and I'm drawn back to that day when rain was in the air and life was beginning anew.   I look forward to the time when May apples--an indigenous wildflower--will again be in bloom, as they were then. 

          If you weren't able to make it to our opening party last Friday evening, I hope you'll stop in the gallery and enjoy all the beautiful work on display there.  If you do, when you see the original of this piece, remind yourself that we're one day closer to springtime!

     Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11 AM to 8 PM and Sundays from 11 to 5.