Recent Works — roy stever | art from the headwaters

Upcoming Show at Kennedy Gallery - May 2024

Finding Warmth in Cool Places

Show opening on May 3, 2024

5 - 8p.m.

Kennedy Gallery and Custom Framing

Portsmouth NH

Kennedy Gallery’s May show, Finding Warmth in Cool Places, is comprised of my latest oil paintings from the fall and winter, 2023-2024. Studio pieces, they are both inspired and informed by one plein air painting - Blackhead from above Squeaker Cove (2023). It was my first plein air on Monhegan Island, a capture of a foggy September day looking northeast to Blackhead, on the Headlands. The piece was subsequently purchased by Marianne Kearney, granddaughter of great American painter George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925). Our truly unexpected and wonderful meeting on Monhegan came as she and her cousin, Laurie Booth - also a granddaughter of Bellows - were on the island as frequent visitors, and to celebrate the acquisition of Bellows’ Portrait of Jackie Hudson (1914) by The Monhegan Museum of Art & History. After hearing interesting tales of their grandfather and family, I delved into Bellows’ inspiring Monhegan works, including Breaking Sky (1911), Evening Swell (1911) and Vine Clad Shore (1913). Pleased with the encouragement of Marianne, I used my Monhegan plein air piece as inspiration during the dark and snowy winter in New Hampshire that lay ahead.

The 11 pieces of the Kennedy Gallery attempt to solve a common problem - how to capture the elements beyond the hard, cold reality of a seascape, snow, rocks, a cliff, or a storm above tree line in the mountains of New England. Why do these imposing settings keep us coming back for more? Blackhead from above Squeaker Cove was a challenge as the menacing fog bank rolled in and out, changing the light, color, and tone, and thus the elements of underlying warmth. For each of the works in this show, I relied heavily on my own old photos, drawings, paintings, memory and imagination to rediscover what was so endearing to me about these amazing, very cool, places.

White Mountains