Paddle, painted on both sides

acrylic and wood

 

Linda Rowell-Kelley is a Bar Harbor resident, born in Keene, New Hampshire.  Her studio studio on Eno Pines Drive, off of the Crooked Road, is open by appointment.

 

Linda studied sculpture, painting, and printmaking at the Portland School of Art, now Maine College of Art, in Portland and considers being an artist and living on Mount Desert Island a blessing. She is inspired by the mountains, fields, birch trees, lupines, and the rocky coastline.

 

An excerpt from her artist statement:

Seeing and creating is like breathing for me and the time I spend doing it is a gift. I love the process of painting, first finding a setting that triggers the inspiration, like the Stone Barn on the Crooked Road, skaters on Little Long Pond in Seal Harbor, or the old Baker Hill Farm that I walked by on my way to school as a child.

 

I spend time looking at the subject and doing many drawings, going back over and over to see how the light changes the colors and shapes. Painting in the studio is the final chapter.

 

I often set up fruits, vegetables, flowers, and plants in the studio to do series of still life paintings. I have spent my life studying the faces of the elderly, watching clouds wave and reform themselves, watching the waves crashing along the shore in Acadia, or capturing the rocks along the shore of Monhegan Island that nature has stacked up high, or the flat sheet of Granite Lake, rich in shoreline blueberries or trees in a storm, stretching and bending with the wind.

 

My work is inspired by what I see, or by a smell, a word, a song, or maybe a question that a four year old asks. I believe in the healing quality of art.

 

Visit  www.lindarowellkelley.com  to learn more about the artist.