Saturday, September 1, 2007

Martha's Vineyard

Coast to coast in one month. Last week I was on east coast spending some time in Massachusetts hitching a ride with my dad and staying with my cousin , Leah and her family. I was able to get over to Martha's Vineyard on Monday and found the gallery that I have a few paintings lingering about.


These are a couple of sketches that I did, one on the ferry ride over of a lighthouse on the Vineyard, or maybe it could have been on one of the Elizabeth Islands. I'm not sure where on the ride over that I made this. The second sketch is the cliffs near Aquinnas.


This is a very quick acrylic wash sketch that I did of the lighthouse.


Treehouse Studios is in West Tisbury and in the month of August they held the 6x6 Treehouse exhibition.


Ruth Adams is the owner of the gallery, shown here as she was about to sign one of her children's books for me. She told me about some of the island's better known artists and what they meant to the area, including Stanley Murphy and one of my favorite artists, Thomas Hart Benton, who spent some time in Chilmark. It felt good and inspiring to be near the area of one of my idols. I could probably talk to Ruth for hours and listen to her talk about painting, illustration and local history as she was very interesting and very nice. It was nice to finally get out of the Detroit area and actually see my artwork presented elsewhere and hear the feedback about my work firsthand and make those artistic connections that I rarely get the opportunity to make.


And here are the three paintings that I did for the show (the three in the center) as they hang in the gallery.

3 comments:

singinghawk said...

Oh Bruce! Your initiative inspires me to get myself out there again! traveling from coast to coast! within a week! showing your paintings in galleries! It's wonderful! It's great that you're doing this kind of stuff...talking to the gallery owners, making artistic connections... it's all as important, if not MORE important, than the actual creating! And your paintings look wonderful on that wall! Congratulations! I think I am going to start sending participating once again! I've forgotten the website that you mentioned before...listings of competitions and such...?

Merisi said...

I spent half my life on the East Coast, yet never made it to Martha's Vineyard (never to the West Coast either). I hope you will show us more of your sketches or paintings from there!
The painting on the right is still my favorite.

Bruce said...

Ana: Hey, that would be great if you started to show in galleries and I'm sure with your skills that you would be a household name in no time! That address is www.artshows.com, but I'm sure there are much more sites out there that have similar listings.

I'm very new to this "get out there and talk with others about my art," so it's a slow go, if you know what I mean. I don't know if it's more important than actually creating something, though. It's more of a bonus or pleasant side-effect.

I'm looking forward to see what you cook up artwise. I KNOW what you cook-up for "snacks," ha, ha.

Merisi: Martha's Vineyard is a scenic place, that's for sure and I really enjoyed my visit there. Although, it wasn't at the height of tourist season and I'm sure that would have had a different effect on me!

Thanks, I like that one, too. The one in the middle is probably the weakest of the three.