Reception - Artists Jim Laurino & Barbara Lussier

JUNE EXHIBITION
Artists Jim Laurino & Barbara Lussier
Art Gallery at the Mill House

May 30 - June 26, 2014

RECEPTION
Sat, Jun 14, 1-4 pm

Work by local artists Jim Laurino and Barbara Lussier will be on display for the month of June with an opening reception on Sat, Jun 14, 1-4 pm.

Barbara Lussier is a philosophically direct descendant of the Old Lyme and the American Hudson River School painters, and approaches her subject in a way that embraces these traditions - honoring nature and working from direct observation.  Her landscapes explore the romance of color and light and have been described as “poetry.”  The daughter of a consummate fisherman and boater, Barbara experienced the mysteries and wonder of the sea while roaming the coastline of Nahant, Massachusetts as a child.  She followed her father to the warmer waters of Florida, where he fished and boated and she attended the Ringling School of Art.  Later, she explored the South Pacific coastline, where she was sometimes dropped by helicopter on uninhabited islands to paint pink rocks and turquoise waters.  Currently, she lives in New England.

Jim Laurino is a representational landscape painter, and his style has been heavily influenced by American and French impressionist painters.  He employs an impasto technique selectively.  Paint in some areas of a canvas will be thinly applied, while other areas (often the paintings’ focal point) will receive a thick layer of textured paint.  The abundance of paint and the directional elements of brush strokes are essential to his presentation.  While he always spends time studying a scene (planning) before he begins a painting, once it starts, the work is driven by inspiration and a complete focus on representing what he sees and what he wants others to see.

He is inspired by nature; changing seasons, farmland vistas, the geography of Connecticut and surrounding states.  Like most painters, he has favored locations; a cemetery in Farmington that overlooks the flatlands of two intersecting waterways (Farmington & Pequabuck rivers), a 4H apple orchard in Bloomfield, the Black Hall river estuary in Old Lyme.  He finds the geography of the western portions of our state particularly compelling as well, and he strives to work on location there whenever possible. 

He enjoys making frames for all of his paintings.  He uses reclaimed materials for his frames, and takes some amount of license with the materials and construction methods used.

Hours

Fri - Sun, 11 am - 4 pm