April Artist Spotlight
Photo Credit John Harcharek
Meet Darryl Abbey
Darryl Abbey is a watercolorist who resides in Holliston, MA and has been painting since 2000. With landscapes and waterscapes as a primary focus, Darryl has recently moved into creating portraits.
MY BACKGROUND
My life was filled with the arts from an early age. My sister is a pianist who went to music school and had a long career as a music teacher and as a church organist. My father painted with oils as a hobby for several decades so there was art in my family throughout my youth.
I started my own involvement in the arts as a musician. Trained as a classical vocalist, I studied at Boston Conservatory and Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. While attending Westminster, I had the privilege of performing with some of the greatest conductors in the world (Bernstein, Boulez, Mehta, Ozawa and many more). I also composed and arranged music, and, in my spare time, I played drums in a jazz band. After graduation, my wife (whom I met at Westminster) and I moved to Boston and started our careers as professional musicians. When we chose to expand our family, I decided it was time to move into the stability of the business world and began a career related to the aviation industry.
As respects my involvement in visual arts, I am mostly self-taught. I started drawing small sketches in my early thirties as a pastime while I commuted on the train to and from my job in Boston. It wasn’t until 2000 when, after creating some landscape sketches on a family vacation, I decided that adding color would enhance the overall impact of my art. I have spent the past 25 years, on and off, painting landscapes, sea and waterscapes and still life images from around New England and Italy. The freedom to choose my subjects and paint what I want to paint is a luxury I treasure.
WHAT IS MY PROCESS?
I am fortunate to have a large, comfortable studio in my home and I enjoy retreating to my private space, putting some music on the sound system and losing myself in art. I paint from reference photos and my own imagination. I draw inspiration from the artists of the Hudson River School and their detailed and color driven landscape paintings. I enjoy the process of painting and creating a tight, realistic representation of my chosen view. My work is not generally an exact copy of a reference photo, and I take artistic license as much as I feel works well, provided that the painting is visually appealing.
I have tried loosening my painting style and dabbling in impressionist and abstract pieces but then I revert to tight realism because, to me, creating a realistic painting which is pleasing to the viewer is what I do best.
It pleases me when I get to the point in a painting when I know that it will come together. For me, painting is like putting a puzzle together: There is a lot of thought given to layout (composition), searching for the right puzzle pieces (the right colors) and putting the puzzle together (assembling my creation). When I feel that a painting is complete, I tend to leave it out on display for a period of time because, as many of us feel, a painting is never really finished.
WHAT DO I PAINT?
I really enjoy painting broad expanses of countryside (valleys, fields, lakes and harbors). Many years ago in a museum, I came across a number of works by Thomas Cole, FE Church, Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt and other artists whom I learned were part of a collective known as “The Hudson River School”. I found their large landscapes featuring the Adirondack mountains, the Hudson Valley, and their use of color and attention to detail inspiring. Their work has had a profound influence on my style of landscape art. I also enjoy painting small scale architecture (i.e. house portraits). I paint still life subjects, but I find them most challenging because of the exactitude required to capture the subject realistically. You can see a broader scope of my work on my website, www.dabbeyart.com .
Last year, I decided that I wanted to try portraiture. I was fortunate to find a fantastic teacher/mentor, Livia Monseau who teaches at the MFA School and the Museum of Fine Arts in NY. Livia has been a great resource, and I learned a lot about perspective, use of positive and negative space and tones.
WHAT AM I WORKING ON NOW?
I recently participated in a workshop (sponsored by WSA) with Irena Roman, a phenomenally talented portrait artist. She was an excellent instructor and opened my eyes to techniques which I would never have imagined were possible. I am currently working on a complex portrait using those newly learned techniques. Now that I have added portrait work to my focus, I have a whole new set of skills to work on and challenges to face. We’ll see how it turns out. In addition, I imagine that I will find a nice Spring themed landscape idea which I can work on to balance out the portrait.
Like many artists, painting started as a hobby to provide balance to the mental rigors of my job helping large aerospace corporations manage risk. When I retired last year, I found myself finally free to devote myself to art on a deeper level and now I revel in the freedom which that affords me.
Darryl is a member of the Wellesley Society of Arts and the Hopkinton Center for the Arts. He is represented by the Premier Image Gallery in Ashland, MA. See more of Darryl’s work on his website