CHARLESTOWN, R.I. — Two brown cows graze in an oil painting hung near a delicate watercolor of Matunuck cornfields, while a sprawling landscape of Jamestown farmland stretches nearly six feet across a nearby wall. The region, as its artists see it, is now on view in Charlestown Gallery’s new exhibition, ‘Farmers Market,’ at a moment when markets are drawing renewed attention and surges in demand across Rhode Island.
The show, which opened last week and runs through October 12, brings together more than 20 artists working in oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, mixed media, sculpture, ceramics and jewelry. All of them were asked to present the farmers’ markets and farmland that have shaped Rhode Island’s identity for generations.
The exhibition was conceived and curated by Kimberly Howard, director of Charlestown Gallery, who has led the gallery for the past two years.
“South County is fortunate to have a rich history of farming, land conservation and preservation, which provides our talented artists with landscapes and subjects in which to create,” Howard said.
A reception celebrating the show is scheduled for Saturday, September 19, from 5-7 p.m. at the gallery, located at 5000 South County Trail.
For many of the artists, the theme was a natural fit. Shawn Kenney, an East Providence painter who has been represented by Charlestown Gallery for close to two decades, contributed “Farm Fresh,” an acrylic painting of a weathered blue tractor parked outside a red barn, a rooster trotting across a dirt road in the foreground.
Kenney said the tractor was real, one he had photographed on a farm, but that everything else in the scene was created in his imagination.
“It was really more about the sense of place, like this idea that you stumbled down a little farm road in South County and you could hear the crickets, and you’ve got this beautiful sun setting behind you and there’s a beat-up old tractor there that’s seen a bunch of years of use,” Kenney said.
Kenney, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a former president of the Providence Art Club, said his work tends towards comfort and warmth, whether he is painting a lobster roll, a hot dog and a beer, or a tractor at dusk.
“My paintings are all about comfort and giving people a sense of peace when they see the artwork in the gallery or hopefully on the walls in their house,” he said.
Antonia Tyz Peeples, a Lebanon, Connecticut, painter who has shown with Charlestown Gallery for roughly 30 years, took a different approach, filling her canvases with oversized, closely cropped fruit. Her oil painting of blueberries, which presents them larger — and juicier — than life, captures droplets of water and reflected light on the fruit’s blue skin.
“I like to see the colors — and especially blueberries — because there’s so much going on when you touch them, and then I put a little water drops on them and see what that does,” Peeples said. “I’m having a lot of fun doing them.”
Peeples, who works almost exclusively in oil, also has an oversized painting of eggs and a piece depicting pomegranate seeds in the show, along with a new painting of honeycomb and honeybees. She said working at such a large scale with groups of items has become a signature style she did not recognize until recently.
“I didn’t realize how much I like multiples,” she said. “I do multiples of stuff over and over, whether it’s the fish or the blueberries or pomegranates or honeycomb.”