The Seacoast Artist Association in Exeter starts off the New Year with “Looking Back at Landscapes,” a retrospective by Durham, NH artist Anita Freeman. The show opens on Wednesday, January 3rd. “This show is a reflective look back at two decades of painting, much of it spent at Seacoast Artist Association when the muses were speaking to me. The paintings took shape as I wandered through seascapes, rivers, waterfalls, landscapes, mountains, gardens, and ponds, waylaid, and captured in turn by each one. These were love letters to a time and place I hoped to lure onto my canvas where I could preserve and revisit them. I found that as I submitted these paintings to exhibits, I often changed their names as another look revealed something I had not seen before. So, for me they are alive. I am honored to share them.”A native-born New Yorker, Anita has lived in New England since 1962. Creating images was important from an early age. Although her several careers eventually took her in a different direction, her interest in the visual arts continued as collector and picture framer and museum docent. She graduated from Cornell University, Lesley College, Boston University, and studied with nationally recognized artists Kevin Shea, J.C. Airoldi, and Lully Schwartz in the North Shore Atelier.
Anita is particularly drawn to artists of Barbizon school with their soft landscapes and social commentary. She focuses on New England coastal themes and maritime subjects. She has painted on Cape Ann and the New Hampshire Seacoast as well as the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain locations. In her oil paintings she is drawn to the continuing variations of light, temperature, and movement of the ocean and landscape while at the same time striving to unify the images in approach, palette, and content. Her work tends to be bold with strong contrast and color filled. She looks to color to express form and emotional tone, drawing at this time on the unstructured brush strokes of impressionism. She is particularly inspired by Winslow Homer’s treatment of the sea and rocks, John Singer Sargent’s landscape paintings and Edward Hopper’s color palette and approach. She admires each of these artists for their adventurous use of brilliant light to capture and illustrate the image, the day, and the mood; they teach: “You must paint the day you are in.”
“What I LOVE about art is this: Art lifts me out of the everyday realm of ideas and concepts I use to run my life, where I am linear, logical and weightless, spinning and tumbling untethered, and drops me heavily like Dorothy’s house onto a technicolor stage of sensory delights. Grounded, I paint landscapes. When I paint, I am transported to the very spot that captured me. I feel the air, the light is fragrant. The colors are loud and soft, warm, and cool. I taste the salty mist blown in from a rolling sea. Time disappears as I load my brush into the buttery paint and touch the canvas. It’s a good time.”
“Looking Back at Landscapes” runs through Sunday, Jan, 28th. Join the SAA artists for a Second Friday reception on Jan, 12th, 5-7PM, where refreshments will be served and music will be provided by Cheryl Sager and Peg Chaffee. The SAA is open Wed-Sat, 10-5 and Sun 1-4. See more at seacoastartist.org and follow them on Facebook. Email gallery@seacoastartist.org with questions.
