'Gems' in the VAULT
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Gil Perry’s exhibit, “Sketches, Studies, Little Gems,” opens today in the Gallery at the VAULT with a reception from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the gallery in Springfield. PHOTO PROVIDED |
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By Susan Smallheer STAFF WRITER - Published: December 4, 2009
SPRINGFIELD – Gil Perry has opened up his personal jewel box and put it on display at Gallery at the VAULT.
In a show that opened this week, Perry's exhibit of "Sketches, Studies, Little Gems" features 100 small paintings and studies that Perry has created over the past 15 years.
The Springfield painter said the landscape paintings are 6 inches by 6 inches, or 6 inches by 8 inches; each is painted on Raymar panels, linen canvas over masonite board. They show scenes familiar to residents of the Connecticut River Valley, as well as Stowe. There are even a few scenes from the American West, including Nebraska and Colorado. There are a few paintings from France as well.
Each of the 100 paintings is for sale at $100 each, and on Wednesday, the first day of the show, 10 of the paintings were already sold, including paintings of Perkinsville, a farm in Springfield, the great falls at Bellows Falls, Herrick's Cove in Rockingham and several of Mount Ascutney.
If there is a muse to the show, it is Mount Ascutney, which is featured in many of the small studies from locations in Springfield, Weathersfield and Windsor.
Perry, 57, who lives in Springfield, has been painting in color for only 15 years, since he started painting with Fran Weston Hoyt, who lived not far from where Perry was living at the time in Sutton, N.H.
He had been drawing for 30 years, he said, "and I wanted to work in color."
She had studied 30 years earlier with Frank Vincent DuMond, who taught at the Art Students League in New York City for years. It is the so-called DuMond palette, which Perry himself now teaches, that guides the series of landscape paintings.
DuMond developed the palette, which helps landscape painters who are painting in sunlight.
Orange, in the DuMond palette, Perry said, is the key to all the other colors.
"Orange is like middle C on a piano," Perry said.
Painting outside on an easel opens up a whole different set of challenges for an artist, Perry said.
For the small paintings, or sketches, Perry uses a "pochade box," a small artist's combination of easel and box.
Some of the paintings are finished, polished miniatures, while some are more impressionistic studies.
"If this one doesn't sell, I think I'm going to work on it a little more," said Perry about one work, noting that he wanted to add more shadows.
One painting of Herrick's Cove, which sold on the first day the show opened, had just had Perry's second touch. He made the pine trees even darker, he said.
Perry said he had proposed the idea of 100 sketches or studies to other galleries in the past, but the idea was rejected because of the costs of framing 100 different paintings.
"I proposed it to Nina and she was delighted," Perry said. The question then became how to display the 100 small paintings.
"She had the idea of binder clips," said Perry.
"Nina told me, 'In 100 years, people will be looking at your small paintings as little gems,'" he said, explaining a portion of the exhibit's title.
"And she also liked the idea of 'gems in the VAULT,'" he said.
An opening wine-and-cheese reception will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. today at the gallery. The show runs through Feb. 15.
susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com
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