Local Landscapes, Local Artists

The Pioneer Valley, long a destination for artists and tourists, offers vistas of mountains, rivers, fertile valleys, and cultivated fields.  The beauty and variety of local and regional landscapes have been recorded by artists over many years, including local artists Sally Curcio, in her Happy Valley bubble sculptures, and Stephen Petegorsky’s photograph of the Meadows.  In an early painting, Scott Prior offers a vision of a nuclear Northampton, while Steve Hannock presents a monumental view of the iconic Oxbow of the Connecticut in a bow to Frederic Church and Thomas Cole, who both painted the famous site in the nineteenth century.  Further afield, local artist Martha Armstrong paints the colors of autumn in Vermont, while Neil Welliver’s large canvases record the late artist’s enduring fascination with the woods and landscapes of Maine. Newly-acquired paintings by Mike Glier, who maintains a studio in Williamstown, are from a series created during a year-long trip along a line of longitude beginning in the Arctic circle and extending in a quarter turn around the Earth.


Image: Sally Curcio. American, born 1971. Happy Valley (Fall). 2016. Mixed media. Purchased. SC 2016: 22–2