Nov. 18/Sun, 11am-5pm
www.FineArtBoston.com, for more information
SAVE THE DATES!
We invite you to our new gallery location
88 Main St., 2nd Fl., New Canaan, CT
COME CELEBRATE
Friday, November 30, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Festival of Lights & Holiday Stroll
Continues through Dec. 20
Call for hours or appointment
Stonington Land Trust
The Stonington Land Trust, founded in 2007, seeks to preserve Stonington’s natural resources including its farms, woodlands, water resources, marshlands, swamps, beaches, plant and animal life as well as the unique historic and scenic character of the town. Each year our lush open space and wildlife habitat dwindle, as it is being subdivided and developed rapidly. The necessary private donations must be secured to conserve and permanently protect this land. Through land donation, placing conservation restrictions on your property, or making a major financial gift to SLT, you can help ensure that more open space will be protected in perpetuity. Land donations, conservation restrictions, and financial gifts offer significant income and estate tax benefits.
Recent changes in Federal tax laws have increased both the maximum annual deduction for conservation restrictions as well as the number of years over which that deduction may be taken. Stonington Land Trust will work with property owners to help achieve their personal, income tax, and estate planning objectives.
Please consider a donation of land or financial gift to SLT for land acquisition, reclamation, and protection. It is a way that you can make a difference here in Stonington for generations to come. Thank you for your support and membership! www.stoningtonlandtrust.org Contact Jim Smith, President 860-535-2528
You are cordially invited to the
Benefit Sale of American Paintings for
The Stonington Land Trust
Preview on Thursday, August 30
4:30-7:30pm at
Adelaide Fine Art
141 Water Street, 2nd Floor, Stonington, CT
Images and prices viewable on our website
www.adelaidefineart.com
Continues Through September 30
Call for hours or appointment
Ann Marenakos (203) 662-0244
Robert Hollis was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1947. His formal art education began when he was 14 at the Cass Technical School of Fine Art. This provided Hollis with exceptional instruction in the necessary foundational skills for drawing and painting. In 1965 he was awarded a talent-based scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, where Walt Disney and Thomas Hart Benton also studied, and Benton later taught. The year that Hollis attended the nationally recognized art school, it became accredited. To Hollis’s dismay, Thomas Hart Benton stopped teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute that same year, because Benton did not believe in grading his students. Hollis did not find his teachers to be particularly inspiring and he left the Institute after two years to organize his first fine arts studio in San Francisco.
While in San Francisco, Robert Hollis became immersed in the exploding Rock and Roll scene. He painted numerous pieces that were commercially used by Rock promoters for publicity for concert events in the Bay Area. One of Hollis’s paintings was recently published in the Abbeville Press book, The Art of Rock. He also created innovative light shows for Bill Graham Productions and CBS television. His visual effects quickly gained attention in the music industry; they served as the backdrop for The Doors, Cream, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, The Holding Company, and other iconic bands.
In 1971, Robert Hollis spent two years traveling and studying in Europe. At his studio on the Isle of Ibiza, Hollis’s work was heavily influenced by the old masters and quality of Mediterranean light. Canvas preparation took multiple weeks, as the raw linen was stretched by hand, primed with layers of materials, and dried by sunlight. According to Hollis, “An oil ground applied in many layers and sanded smooth has a magic and integrity all its own.” Hollis utilized organic minerals and precious stones to mix his own pigments. He developed his trademark style with vivid colors and stunning visual imagery.
Hollis left Ibiza for South America. He spent 14 months backpacking through Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru, where he often climbed high into the Andes to paint. He studied under Fernado De La Jara who lived among the indigenous peoples of the Andes. Hollis participated in a major exhibition with the leading artists of Cuzco, Peru.
Upon his return to the United States in 1975, Hollis began to focus on painting figurative subjects in exquisite detail. His style had matured, as did his painting technique. One painting from this period is a remarkable portrait of a young boy holding a toy jet airplane. He sits poised at a table with an expression of wonder and yearning. The picture draws one back to childhood innocence and expectation.
In a discussion with Hollis about his painting style, he described the building up of layers and layers of transparent and translucent pigments as the “molecular disintegration of paint layers”. “It is what makes them come alive”, said Hollis of his pictures. His works are organic in quality. They are richly textural; with patterned surfaces that have such depth that they seem to move and change, as one’s eye travels from color to color in a dance around the subject painted. But as one views specific details in a Hollis painting, those very areas seem to expand, pushing ones eye beyond to the next color field or pattern. It is, thus, endlessly exciting to gaze at a Hollis picture, for it is never static.
Hollis also began to design his own carved and gilded frames in the 1980’s for his finished paintings. Each of his frames is created to marry perfectly with his art, harmonizing with the colors and patterns within the canvas. This tradition was employed by American artists such as Childe Hassam and John Twachtman in the 19th & early 20th C., but is highly unusual today. Hollis remains a dedicated frame designer, and most of his paintings are framed in frames designed by him.
It is the culmination of 40 years of painting experience that can be seen in the brilliant works by Robert Hollis today. His paintings, Images of America, are of ordinary citizens depicted in their natural surroundings. The subjects include boys playing baseball, a girl practicing her flute, a baby peeking at a stack of wrapped gift packages, a dog sleeping contently on his bed, a woman reading on her patchwork quilt in bed, among others. They are captivating paintings, and the subjects are timeless.
Robert Hollis continues to paint in his private studio. He is represented by Adelaide Fine Art of Darien and Stonington, CT: (203) 662-0244. www.adelaidefineart.com Please call for further information. Several limited edition giclee prints of Hollis’s work are also now available.
Ann Marenakos Establishes Adelaide Fine Art
Darien and Stonington, CONN. – After a rewarding 20-year career specializing in marine art at Quester Gallery, a leading source for exceptional Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Century marine art and antiques, Ann Marenakos has established Adelaide Fine Art, specializing in American paintings. Her new office is on Water Street in the charming seaside village Stonington, CT, and is open by appointment year round as well as for special shows and events.
Adelaide Fine Art will focus on landscape, seascape, marine, sporting, figurative, and floral paintings. “I offer a wide range of major and lesser-known artists, most of whom were active from 1875-1950,” said Marenakos. She assembles collections of post-Impressionistic paintings, women painters, Cape Ann School, Boston School, Monhegan Island painters, and searches for items of specific interest to collectors – keeping an active “wish list” for clients. “I have always been known for art that is excellent in quality and fair in price, and I stand behind everything I sell,” said Marenakos.
Marenakos’s interest in fine art began as a young child. She commented, “From an early age my parents encouraged my creativity, and I took art classes in the Maxwell studio in Noank, CT and later at the DeCordova Museum, in Lincoln, Mass.”
Marenakos also developed an appreciation for antiques. “I regularly accompanied my mother to her favorite antiques shop, The Red Shed in Old Mystic, Conn. There, Mrs. Gill would allow me to search the antique chests’ drawers, stuffed with silver and wonderful starched linens.”
Under the tutelage of James Marenakos, her father and founder of Quester Gallery, he first-hand knowledge of art was furthered. “In the 1970’s, my father took me on spontaneous antique buying trips in Litchfield and Farmington counties. These road trips have become favorite memories of great times we spent together. My exposure to vast collections of wonderful American art and antiques at this time honed my eye and taught me to examine and rank pieces by quality and condition. The thrill of finding a treasure developed a life-long desire in me to one day become a buyer and seller of art and antiques myself.”
After graduating from the Ethel Walker School and Lewis and Clark College, where she majored in art history, Ann began to work for her father at Quester Gallery where she sold paintings numerous important private and corporate art collections, worked with several artists’ estates and their collections, planned and installed exhibitions and won several awards for her catalog designs. She became a partner at Quester Gallery, participating in more than 100 prestigious antiques shows and art exhibitions in Boston; Nantucket; Martha’s Vineyard; New York City; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington, D.C., Chicago; San Francisco; and Naples, Fla.
Marenakos welcomes and devotes herself equally to new buyers and seasoned collectors alike. “I have had the privilege of sharing my knowledge, enthusiasm, creativity and standard for excellence with many wonderful collectors for more than 20 years. Many have made me a trusted advisor in their collecting pursuits. These relationships have been a real source of joy in my life. I look forward to continuing those relationships and forming new ones in the same tradition.”
Adelaide Fine Art is open by appointment only. For information, call (203) 662-0244; write PO Box 1771, Darien CT 06820; or visit www.adelaidefineart.com.
Printed in “The Gallery,” page 34, April 27, 2007 – Antiques and The Arts Weekly
March 21-April 14
Exhibition and Sale of American Paintings Benefiting The Campaign for Ethel Walker Woods Help Save 424 Acres of Meadows, Forests & Wildlife
Join Us Wednesday, March 21 for the Opening 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Patriot National Bank 800 Post Road, Darien, CT
Continues Through April 14, 2007
The Campaign for Ethel Walker Woods is committed to conserve and permanently protect 424-acres of lush meadows, forests, wetlands, streams, and floodplains in the heart of more than 1,400 acres of continuous open space in Connecticut. Its rich and exceptionally diverse wildlife habitat is in immediate danger of being subdivided and developed if the necessary private donations are not secured. The acquisition of the Ethel Walker Woods is a two phase project, with The Trust for Public Land committing to raise nearly three million dollars in private donations by March 31, 2007 in order to close on Phase I. All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law and may be made in the form of cash, credit card gifts, and appreciated securities and stocks.
If you have any questions, please contact:
Melissa Spear
203-777-7367 ext. 2
The Trust for Public Land
101 Whitney Ave.
2nd Fl.
New Haven, CT 06510
Thank you for your support of this important conservation project!