Don’t let the Pemaquid Art Gallery’s season close on Oct. 11 without having viewed the great range of fine art on view there, for example the widely divergent work of well known local artists Julie Babb and Barbara Vanderbilt.
Babb’s delicate, highly skilled and detailed gouache portraits of birds have been long-time favorites and are feasts for the eye. Vanderbilt’s powerful yet softly colored pastel close-ups of geological and natural formations, boulders and trees have an emotional and meditative impact mesmerizing the viewer. Both are masters of beautiful, soft color combinations and deft color blending. And both, although so different in the scale of their subject matter, draw the viewer into special visual worlds.
Babb spent her early years in Mexico and received her first art instruction during college years there. Her early love of nature was formed there, surrounded by the flowering natural world year round. She moved to Maine in 1962 and attended the university of Maine at Orono, then moved with her husband to Rochester, New York where she pursued five years of art education. She returned to Maine in 1992, where she continued to study drawing and painting, including home study of ornithology. She uses not only the gouache medium in her work but also scratchboard which allows for fine detail in white lines against a black background.
Babb has received numerous awards. She has also been a longtime art instructor. Her designs have been featured in many publications. Her work can be seen online at www.covehousestudios.com.
Vanderbilt was born in New York City, grew up in northern New Jersey, moved to Maine in 1971, and has a degree in art from the University of Maine in Augusta. She studied with local artists both in Maine and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
For years, she was an artist in clay. With her husband, she opened the Gothic Tile company in 1989, which specialized in custom ceramic tiles for custom installations all over the country. She was a visiting artist to high school art programs, inspiring others to experience working in clay. However, with her love of nature, when she discovered pastels she found the medium very exciting and one that lent itself so readily to self expression. She tries to convey the interplay between strength and delicacy, the contrast between the peacefulness of the moment and the rough changes that nature brings in the way of seasonal variation, erosion and storm. More of her work is viewable online at http://bvanderbilt.fineartstudioonline.com.
The work of these two artists reveal the variety of work available at the Pemaquid Art Gallery.
The other 2021 Pemaquid Gallery artists are Barbara Applegate, Debra Arter, Bruce Babb, Stephen Busch, John Butke, Dianne Dolan, Gwenolyn Evans, Peggy Farrell, Sarah Fisher, Claire Hancock, Kay Sawyer Hannah, Kathleen Horst, Hannah Ineson, Will Kefauver, Jan Kilburn, Barbara Klein, Patti Leavitt, Sally Loughridge, Judy Nixon, Brooke Pay (guest member), Alexandra Perry-Weiss, Paul Sherman, Cindy Spencer, Liliana Thelander, Kimberly Skillen Traina, Bob Vaughan, Candace Vlcek, Bev Walker, Carol Wiley (guest member) and Sherrie York.
Members’ work can be viewed at http://pemaquidartgallery.com.
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