The Villages Art League and The Villages Recreation Department will host their fourth annual exhibit opening Saturday, Sept. 10. Themed Inspired by the Masters the exhibit will be at La Galleria in La Hacienda Regional Recreation Center in Spanish Springs. The opening reception will be from 1 to 3 p.m. The exhibit will be up until December 10.
Members of the VAL use the theme Inspired by the Masters as an opportunity to do some research on a particular artist or work of art that inspires them.
“They then allow the work to influence an original work of art of their own,” says Catherine Sullivan, VAL Exhibit Chair. “These are not copies of the original, but pieces inspired by them.” Each painting will have a photograph attached of the work that inspired them.
The show will be judged by Ocala-based artist Margaret Watts. An American realist artist Watts began painting in oil as a child. Watts, a native of New Jersey, moved to Marion County in 1953. She is a member of American Society of Portrait Artists, Plein Air Florida, Marion Cultural Alliance and Ocala Plein Air Painters. Margaret’s love of the land and rivers shines through her work, which is usually oil or soft pastel.
Her works hang in private and corporate collections. Her public art includes “Marion County Agriculture” installed in tile at the Ocala Public Library and Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala has as part of its permanent collection forty of Watt’s oil paintings ranging in size from 17 feet to 12 inches.
“This country, its land, its people and wildlife are the inspiration for my paintings. I paint the Florida everyone loves – people, lakes, rivers, rolling hills and the wonderful sky in all its varieties’” is how Watts describes her work.
About 30 paintings will be exhibited. Judging will happen prior to the show opening.
