Lisa Leary GALLERIES

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THE BOAT PAINTINGS GALLERY. The series of boat paintings came about after many years of fly-fishing for salmon from a 26' cedar wood canoe on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada. My husband, Steven, built a log cabin home in Blissfield, N.B. in the late 1980's. No summer was more special than the summer of 2005 when we invited our niece, Elizabeth, then 12, to join us for a week. The boat paintings started shortly after we returned. On Halloween night, 2005, we lost our log cabin home to arson. (We lost much more than that, but I won't elaborate here). The paintings continued and the damage caused by the fire is most visible in Boat painting #6 which was painted with a combination of oil paint and tar. It has a dark, sticky, burnt feel to it. Boats #4 and #5 talk about impending conflict or confrontation with these boat forms approaching each other in a menacing way. Other paintings speak to the many phases involved in the process of loss. The canoe shape had become a symbol of our time spent in New Brunswick and was also symbolic of our identities as human beings interacting within that environment. Click on Painting to Enlarge     Boats, #1  Boats, #2 Boats, #3 Boats, #4          Boats, #5  Boats, #6 Boats, #7   Boats, #8          Boats, #9 Boats, #10   Boats, #11  Boats, #12     Boats, #13 Boats, #14 Boats, #15