Featured Artist
Judy Hawkins

"Backyard Hill" by Judy Hawkins

 

 

Animal Tales

August 3 - September 2, 2007
Opening Reception Friday, August 3, 5-8 pm

Amy Boemig	Caryn King
Lesley Heathcote	Robin Stronk

"Young Skunk" by Lesley Heathcote

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TWO EXHIBITS: ANIMAL TALES AND JUDY HAWKINS' LANDSCAPES FEATURED AT WAG

The Windham Art Gallery is pleased to present the Featured Artist for August, Judy Hawkins, whose work will be installed in the front gallery. Hawkins will be showing a new series of oil paintings that explore light and color in the landscape. In the back gallery, there will be a group exhibition entitled Animal Tales, the work of four of WAG's artist-members, all who enjoy depicting animals: Amy Boemig, Lesley Heathcote, Caryn King and Robin Stronk. Animal Tales and Judy Hawkins will run August 3-September 2, with an opening reception on Friday, August 3 from 5-8 PM.

For her Featured Artist exhibition, Judy Hawkins will present a new series of oil paintings in three series: clouds and reflection, trees and under story, starry skies and moonlit nights. A well-known and prolific landscape painter in Southern Vermont, Hawkins is continually inspired by the environment around her. A recent series of night paintings, for example, came out of a winter drive home from Saxtons River in which Hawkins found herself “mesmerized by the way the light was fractured into sparkling rays created by the moonlight and the car’s headlights.” Many of Hawkins’ works come out of a “serendipitous moment” in the process of painting itself, when, for example, one small area of a painting inspires Hawkins to expand and explore through the creation of a new painting or series of paintings.

Whether an atmospheric rendering of a dark river flowing toward and an expanse of somber blue-gray clouds gathered over a wide horizon, or an abstract depiction of branches and brambles, painted in high-energy electric colors, each of Hawkins’ paintings are both an emotional response to the landscape—in which the viewer is invited to find their own interpretation—and a continual, engagement with the painterly process and how color, form and brushwork inform all of it.

Fascinated by the ways in which animals are like and unlike us, Amy Boemig, likes to capture the way all creatures move and, as she says, "the different, often very visual ways, they communicate." Boemig who creates painting in which real animals, such as dogs and horses are depicted, she often paints imaginary or surrealistic creatures, like unicorns, as well. Through expression, stance and gesture, Boemig suggests the unique character, and the story behind that character, in each of the subjects she paints. Lesley Heathcote is a careful observer and recorder of animals in their natural surroundings. Her work often captures small, intimate moments in an animal's life, such as a young skunk, who walks among a cluster of ferns, looking timidly up at the viewer." Animals are a source of joy and endless fascination for me," Heathcote says. She uses color, line, and light, she explains, "to convey the intelligence, beauty, and vitality of other species with whom we share the earth."

"'Animal Tales' is the perfect name for how I see my work," Caryn King recently remarked. Long interested in the narrative aspect of painting, she uses both her observation of animals and her imagination to evoke a sense of the animal's character or emotion, as well as the story of the animal and its life. Because her process is careful, slow, and often includes decorative borders, layers and details, such as a ring of daisies framing the gentle face of a cow, King feels close to her subjects as she paints them. Working from many photographs she takes while visiting farms, King first makes sketches from the photographs before she begins to paint. A painter and retired veterinarian, Robin Stronk says, “My life has revolved around the ‘Why?’ of the natural world.” Whether noting the velvety musculature of cat as it stretches, or the proud, proprietary nature of hens in a hen house, or the luxurious privilege a dog, who has claimed a leather sofa for herself, Stronk brings a sense of humor, delight and celebration to all things living in her work.