My very own art show!

The library in the little community where I taught has a hallway gallery when you enter.  Artists are invited to sign up to exhibit for one month.  For many years, I hung my elementary students' artwork in this gallery for the month of March, to celebrate Youth Art Month, and the teacher who replaced me  has continued this tradition.  The high school art teacher also takes a turn of a month for her student work!  During my final year of teaching, and her first year, she and I did a joint exhibit of our personal work in this gallery; I blogged about that show in a post you can find HERE.   Fast-forward a few years to now, and I'm back exhibiting in the library, this time with just my own artwork, including the paintings above and below.

This past summer, I attended an immersive plein air painting class on the campus of Bennington College, and wrote about it in a blog post HERE.  I recently refined the two paintings directly above that were painted during this time (on the Bennington College library patio, and a statue found in a garden on the grounds of historic Park McCullough House).  I wanted the opportunity to share these paintings, as well as the other work from the summer, and also some acrylic textural paintings I had recently completed.  So I jumped at the chance to show this work for the first time, at this gallery, where my work will be seen by many of my former students!  Here's a few views of most of the gallery, each wall from both directions. First, here's the wall with the oil paintings (and some photos and doodles not visible in these pics).

And here's the other, shorter wall...

I should note that due to the size of the hallway and lighting, I struggled to get decent photos.  I didn't want to use a flash and get glare on the artwork, either.  So these imperfect photos will have to suffice.  Anyhow, here are some close-ups of the work on exhibit. Directly below, four of the oil paintings completed during my Bennington week - trees at dusk outside the painting studio, a brick wall at the faculty village, an interior of the greenhouse at the Park McCullough Historic House, and a campus view. (There's another campus view at the top of this post.) 

Also on display are two recent acrylic textural abstractions.  Directly below is a piece titled 'Elements', and below it is the larger 'Marsh Dreams', which incorporates a lot of fabric collage and beads, as well as the use of various textural acrylic mediums. 

And there's a selection of 8 of my photos.  Choosing just 8 was an insane challenge, but I only had 8 frames and I wasn't ready to buy more or cut more mats...

I am also displaying my doodles, many of which you saw in my prior post.

There's a small oil painting that I did looking out at the lake from our 'camp', where we spend much of our summer and fall.  I keep changing this painting - unfortunately the light was different each time I worked on it plein air, so I gave up and just had fun with it at home in the studio.  Not terrific, but better than it was!

 And a stand of bright flowers painted on the Bennington campus

 And that's the entire show, pretty much!  Thanks for stopping in for a look!