WILLSBORO — Two years have passed since artist Patricia Reynolds put her work out there.
That changes on Sunday with an exhibition of recent paintings and watercolors of Lake Champlain, the North Country and floral subjects, to be held at her East Side Studio in Willsboro. The opening reception is from noon to 5 p.m.
“It’s about 20 new works — rice paper works, watercolor, a few small oils,” Reynolds said.
There is a large watercolor of the Four Brothers Islands, a seminal subject for her. If she didn’t paint the islands, patrons would wonder.
“Canyon Flight” is a result of happenstance.
“This was done by taking off paint. On a damp day, certain pigments will separate. It’s one of those wonderful things that occur that are a surprise,” Reynolds said. “If you try to do it, you couldn’t do it.”
Reynolds’s most recent accolade was the selection of one of her works for the permanent collection at the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake.
“I’m in good company; my old teachers Robert Whitney and Robert Plum are in the museum’s collection. They were my idols,” she said. “Robert Whitney offered classes in Elizabethtown. He gave homework assignments. He said what he wanted in a work on a flat sheet of 22-by-30-inch paper.”
Most students didn’t execute the assignments, or not wholly. But not the diligent Reynolds, who completed every task assigned.
“I really wanted to learn,” she said. “It was all practice, practice, practice. Years later in 1978, I was invited to have a show with those two men. I was just thrilled.”
A friend’s well-situated property provided the catalyst for “View from Essex/Lake Champlain.”
She painted “Burst of Autumn” on heavy white paper.
“That’s why it has a bit of a different look,” she said.
“Woodland Blue” is a work on rice paper.
“It’s flat paper, and I crush it. It has fibers in it. It’s like working on a Kleenex,” she said.
Reynolds smooths it out and places it on watercolor paper.
“I adhere it to the watercolor paper with an acrylic medium. If I tried to paint on it without adhering it, I couldn’t paint. It tears a lot,” she explained.
The work has a multi-layer effect achieved by the use of a palette knife with paint on the foreground.
“I work wet, and some areas I want to be dry when I do it,” she said.
Birds in flight are a recurring motif in works such as “Springtime.”
“I put in birds to give a third dimension,” she said.
Reynolds’s attraction to aesthetics from the East is evident in companion works, “Oriental Flora I” and “Oriental Floral II.”
“I studied with a Chinese painter for a period,” she said. “He was a marvelous artist.”
“Autumn Mood” is another work on rice paper ablaze with bronze-blue-rust hues.
“Looking Toward AuSable Point” is a fall memory of a drive Reynolds took along Route 9.
Gamboge yellow contrasts with greens in “Sunrise Over the Four Brothers Islands.”
“They were actually named for the Hatch brothers, famous in Willsboro,” Reynolds said.
Inspiration is as close and simple as a turn in her backyard at sunrise.
“I get up and see them,” Reynolds said of the islands. “They’re going to be very dramatic when the season is turning from fall to winter. You get the colder and warmer air meeting.”
Email Robin Caudell: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Paintings and watercolors (2010 to 2012) by Patricia Reynolds.
WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: East Side Studio, 828 Point Road, Willsboro.
CONTACT: 963-8356.
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