For the month of July, the library presents our Art Show of the Month- Kathy Sykes: It’s About Time. A reception for the artist will be held from 4:00 – 6:00 pm on Saturday, July 9th. All are welcome to attend. This collection of oil paintings on canvas includes a rich variety of botanical subject matter as well as portraits.
From the Artist
I can’t recall a time when I didn’t draw. I discovered there was such a thing as art in the second grade when our teacher showed us a painting done by Jean-Francois Millet of peasants working in a field. What a revelation. I took art as an elective in high school and joined the art club. The first art museum I remember going to was the Museum of Modern Art on an art club trip to Manhattan one beautiful spring day. I fell in love with the city that trip and vowed to live there as soon as I got out of college. Since that first encounter, I have been fortunate enough to have visited and taken pleasure in countless museums and galleries around the world. Certainly a major advantage of living in the city is having so many important museums at my fingertips. One of the things I missed most during Covid was not being able to roam around an art museum.
I was an art history minor in college. Through the many years of living in the city, I have taken classes at a number of art schools there. After I retired from thirty years of working on the editorial staff of House Beautiful magazine, I decided to try my hand at pottery, with classes on wheel throwing at Greenwich House Pottery, and I started occasionally painting after years of doing little. I went to Tuscany for a week of “en plein air” classes, painting the beautiful surrounding countryside. It was something I had wanted to do for years. I enjoy painting people and took several portraiture workshops at the New York Academy of Art.
During the early dark days of Covid when we were all homebound, I found a wonderful escape in painting. It was easy to get lost capturing a tropical plant I had photographed on a past vacation to a warm climate or a blossom from my amazing tree peony bush in my backyard. I love nature and am drawn to trying to capture its likeness, one that is true to the object. I have recently started painting my sweet cats Coco and Shayla.
This show includes several small collections. There are five paintings of tree peonies and five of plants from a group I call Tropica. Two paintings are of baby Josie and two are from Hit the Road, paintings inspired by cracked asphalt along Ludlow Road. All are done in oil on canvas.
While I have been in group exhibitions including Hopper House Museum, Rockland Center for the Arts and Vytlacil, this is my first solo show and, at this time in my life, it will probably be my last. I would like to thank Alexis Starke at the Piermont Library, I am grateful for her encouragement, and my wonderful husband Lynn who is always there cheering me on.
Kathleen Mahoney Sykes