Trees

Opening: March 9, 2025 from 2 – 5 pm

From the time of my childhood to now it has always been Nature that has lured me and my brushes. I’ve spent countless hours roaming pasture and woodland immersing myself in the beauty that surrounds me till it feels imprinted on my very skin. Then I go home to use watercolors, oils, pastels or inks to begin to try translating what I have just experienced. Sometimes I work from a photo I have taken. Other times it is a ‘feeling’ memory that moves my brushes after I return from my foray….or I simply feel a pull to tap into an inner landscape.

This exhibition is all about trees and what they impart to me. Though they stand silent, they are steadfast in their presence and radiate their power of resilience, regeneration and tranquility. They speak to us all in various ways. I attempt to give visual form through colors , light and shadow to capture some of their glory. The colors may not be what is seen with the naked eye. Instead they are colors that sing with the vibrancy that I feel hidden there. It is my hope that these paintings reveal to the viewer at least some of the majesty that enliven the trees all around us.

Artist Bio:

I began a life in art as a child with the inspiration and support of my mother who gave me my first set of Reeves watercolors and taught a little about drawing. My formal study in watercolors and drawing began in 1963 at St. Anne’s School in Charlottesville, Va. With Mr. Makielsky. After graduating I went to New York City in 1966 where I spent a year learning how to paint with oils at Finch College with Astrith Derup. I then followed her to the New School for Social Research in New York City where I continued studying oil painting with her and added fabric design and silk screening. I moved to California in 1974 where I began studies in Japanese shiatsu and Chinese medicine all the while continuing to paint and draw on my own. I enrolled at the California Clooege of Arts and Crafts from 1980 to 1983 where I took a course in medical illustration with Vincent Pierce and studied watercolor painting with James Torlakson. By 1985 I returned to the East Coast and Massachusetts to live and began a lengthy and profound period of studies in art and painting with Ric Campman at the River Gallery School in Brattleboro, Vt. from 1994 to 2006.