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
Squeaker Cove to Blackhead, Monhegan Headlands | on board, 16x20
Last Light, Monhegan Harbor | oil on board, 12x24
Lifting Fog, Monhegan Headlands | oil on board, 18x18
Rocks and the Rising Sea, Monhegan|oil on canvas, 11x14
Morning Fog, Monhegan Harbor| oil on board,12x24
Mt. Washington from Wildcat Ridge | oil on board, 12x24
Summit Clouds, Mt. Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge | oil on board, 18x24
Along Crawford’s Path to Mt. Washington | oil on board, 12x24
Mts. Adams and Madison, the Great Gulf Wilderness |oil on board, 12x24
Maine Alpine
Knife Edge, Mt. Katahdin | oil on board, 10 1/2x14 1/2
Mahoosuc Range Thunderstorm | oil on board, 18x24
Exhibits
Kennedy Gallery and Custom Framing | Portsmouth, NH
March 3 - April 2, 2023
Marking Time in the Wild
oil paintings of northern New England by artist Roy Stever
This show takes us to well-known places such as Mt. Washington in New Hampshire and Katahdin in Maine, to lesser known coastal features of Maine - from Petit Manan and Schoodic Point (Acadia National Park) in the north to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in the south. Also featured are dramatic scenes of the headlands and coves on Monhegan Island. In New Hampshire, works from the artist’s hometown are painted from a local point of view of the White Mountains and its headwaters. There are pieces from Vermont, as well, including a quirky summit named “The Owl” and, of course, a Green Mountain pond and a Waitsfield cow.