Opening Reception: Plein Air, Works on Paper by Dorothy Spears

The Cornwall Library is pleased to present Plein Air, an elegant selection of watercolors by artist and writer Dorothy Spears.

Her watercolors evoke the natural delights of the northwest corner of Connecticut, sometimes explicitly, as in Warren Town Beach, Autumn, but always with fine restraint. This painting consists of a suggestion of two Adirondack chairs facing a hint of shoreline in muted fall color. The rest, including land, water, and sky, is only blank white watercolor paper, but the effect is eloquently seasonal and lake-like.

Spears says about her work, “For me, as a writer and an artist, it’s what remains unsaid or unseen—in my watercolors, for example, the white of the page—that gives shape to everything else.”

Her passion for art dates back to high school when she first saw Georgia O’Keefe’s watercolors. At Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, she studied art and art history. After graduation, she attended Parsons School of Design in Paris and SUNY Purchase.

Later, she worked at Leo Castelli Gallery and wrote a memoir, Art Tarts: An Indiscreet Tour of the 1980’s Art World, about coming of age at that time. She writes regularly about art for the New York Times and many other magazines and newspapers. She edited the anthology Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories About Flying, published by Open City Books/Grove Press in 2009. After a lifetime of contributions to the art world, with her show at the Cornwall Library she is realizing a dream that began when she was 16: an exhibit of her own watercolors.

The watercolors in this show will be available for purchase.

Dorothy Spears lives with her husband, artist Alexis Rockman, in Warren, Connecticut.

Registration is requested for the opening reception.