Photo by Amanda Hagood
Some people say retirement is when you stop living at work and you start working at living. This aphorism applies to the forty-strong artists of the Town Shores Art Guild, whose Love Is In The Air exhibit runs through Feb. 29 at Gulfport’s new Artists of Elements gallery. The show is a multi-toned, inspiring mix of work from both lifelong artists and artists just beginning their creative careers.
This outpouring of artistry – the Guild’s third member show within the last year – certainly suggests these creators have been busy. Or, as TSAG President Dianne Marlene Hargatai wryly quips, “We’re not dead yet!”
Inspired Work
The exhibit, Hargatain explains, features 12 painters, photographers, and digital artists, including two – Dr. Beverly Boyarsky and Cora Marshall – who are resident artists at the gallery. Her own “Sweater Weather” is an arresting portrait featuring a sylphic woman in vibrant colors. Hargatai primarily works in digital drawing.
Painter Pat Gallagher also has a piece in the show – a dreamy, blue-green seascape dominated by a finely detailed palm tree. It’s part of a series inspired by the Florida Highwaymen, a group of Black artists active in the 1950s-1980s who sold their vivid tropical landscapes to tourists from the trunks of their cars (being unwelcome in segregated galleries).
The former art teacher recently met a granddaughter of one of the artists and fell in love with their distinctive style. She knew she had to try it.
“I’m painting my way into it!” she said.
In stark contrast is Pat Flaherty’s seaside scene, featuring a weatherbeaten house on a rocky coastline, backed by a gray-washed watercolor sky. Flaherty painted the scene mostly from memory. She recalled an empty old beach house she and her friends visited growing up in Maine. Storms have long since claimed the structure, but 70 years of watercolor painting allow her to capture it evocatively even today.
Photo by Amanda Hagood
The Mane Event
Stealing the show, Janice Stephenson’s painting of two horses stands out. Not only because of the equines’ delicate peach-pastel palette, but because of their shiny, cascading manes. Grinning, Stephenson explains that she added the fibers – carefully unraveled metallic thread – after completing the painting. It’s a whinnying effect, to be sure.
Stephenson often experiments with textural elements in her work. Recently, while working to capture the delicate curves of a magnolia blossom, she mixed her own textured paint using flour. “Every picture I do something different,” she says.
And when experiments don’t work out?
“They end up behind the couch!” she said.
Stephenson started painting after a long and challenging career in special education. “It’s a purpose,” she said. “I’ve started the creative portion of my life.”
Photo courtesy of the Town Shores Art Guild
A Gathering Space
The community focus of Love Is In The Air is precisely what co-owner Ellen Newbauer hoped to achieve in opening Artists of Elements’ Gulfport location. Since its December opening, the venue offered not just gallery walls, but classes, spiritual programs and, soon, a listening space. (Follow the piano-key painted stairs to the second story.)
“We wanted to provide a gathering space for whatever the community needs,” she said.
Looking around at the proud Town Shores artists with their friends and families, together with enthusiastic fans, it seems they are well on their way.
Arts All Around!
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