A plein air painter in Lyme Land Trust’s Banningwood Preserve in Hadlyme on Columbus Day Weekend during the 2014 Celebrating Lyme’s Beauty Paint-Out.
A new exhibit entitled “Celebrating Lyme’s Beauty,” which showcases new original paintings of Lyme’s Banningwood Preserve, is on view at New London’s Lyman Allyn Art Museum in its Glassenberg Gallery and open to the public through March 22.
The exhibit will feature landscapes created by artists from all over New England who participated in the “Celebrating Lyme’s Beauty Paint-Out,” an annual plein air painting event now in its fourth year that is co-organized by the Lyme Art Association, Lyme Land Conservation Trust and The Lyman Allyn Art Museum.
The Paint-Out event continues the plein air tradition established by the early American Impressionists who founded the Lyme Art Colony over a hundred years ago and used Lyme’s meadows, rivers and streams as subjects for their work.
Painting of Roaring Brook by Trenton Youngs
This year’s Paint-Out was held on Columbus Day Weekend, 2014, at the Land Trust’s newly acquired Banningwood Preserve, a 102-acre upland and flood plain landscape in Hadlyme covered with forests and fields.
The clear waters of Roaring Brook flow through the middle of the Preserve. Dramatic rock ledges, once quarried to provide stone for nearby Gillette Castle, rise over the landscape. Features include dramatic vistas, lush meadows, cedar groves, quarry pools, beaver dams and lodges, tree canopies, and an early 19th Century family burying ground with grave stones that attest to the land’s history.
Scenes of fall foliage, woodlands and streams are among the subjects depicted in this collection of works.
“This event is the result of a successful cooperative enterprise between three local non-profit organizations that have important ties to Lyme’s memorable landscape,” said Sam Quigley, Director of the Lyman Allyn Art Museum. “The greater New London County community is richer because of this partnership among these three organizations, which have different and distinct missions but which share a commitment to the beauty, art and preservation of our natural landscape.”
“The Lyman Allyn Art Museum’s permanent collection of Lyme Impressionist paintings,” Quigley continued, “provides wonderful inspiration for the participating artists; the Lyme Land Conservation Trust’s commitment to preserving Lyme’s forests and farmlands makes the Paint-Out possible; and the ability of the artists of the Lyme Art Association to capture the landscape’s natural beauty through plein air paintings will make this a very engaging exhibition.”
For more information about the exhibition, contact Rebecca Marsie at 860.443.2545 x112 or at marsie@lymanallyn.org, or visit www.lymelandtrust.org and/or www.lymanallyn.org.
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes about 25,000 visitors annually from New London, Southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neo-classical building surrounded by 11 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents a number of changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 10,000 objects from ancient times to the present; artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.
The museum is located at 625 Williams Street, New London, Connecticut, exit 83 off I-95. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Sundays 1:00 – 5:00 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. For more information call 860.443.2545, ext. 129 or visit us on Facebook or the web at: www.lymanallyn.org.
Since 1966, Lyme Land Conservation Trust has been conserving the unique and historic landscapes of Lyme, Connecticut. During those years, our rural community has shown that a small population can have a giant impact. Residents and friends of Lyme have donated land, dollars, and lots of hard work to acquire and protect almost 3000 acres of woodlands, craggy hills, working farm fields, and bird-filled marshes. For more information call 860-434-4639; email: info@lymelandtrust.org ; or visit it on Facebook or on the web at www.lymelandtrust.org
Opened in 1921 as a permanent exhibition home for the Lyme Art Colony artists, the Lyme Art Association Gallery, which is free to the public, continues to be a vibrant art center. Professional as well as developing artists mount major exhibitions throughout the year and form the heart of the Lyme Art Association, which now boasts more than 1,000 members. It offers a schedule of exhibitions and sales, affordable art classes, workshops, and a popular lecture series.
The Lyme Art Association gallery is located at 90 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT. It is open Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information call 860-434-7802 or visit www.lymeartassociation.org .
About the author: Felix Kloman is a sailor, rower, husband, father, grandfather, retired management consultant and, above all, a curious reader and writer. He’s explored how we as human beings and organizations respond to ever-present uncertainty in two books, ‘Mumpsimus Revisited’ (2005) and ‘The Fantods of Risk’ (2008). A 20-year resident of Lyme, he now writes book reviews, mostly of non-fiction that explores our minds, our behavior, our politics and our history. But he does throw in a novel here and there. For more than 50 years, he’s put together the 17 syllables that comprise haiku, the traditional Japanese poetry, and now serves as the self-appointed “poet laureate” of Ashlawn Farms Coffee, where he may be seen on Friday mornings. His wife, Ann, is also a writer, but of mystery novels, all of which begin in a bubbling village in midcoast Maine, strangely reminiscent of the town she and her husband visit every summer.
