It is only May, but we feel summer’s heat and cool breezes in Rebecca Everett’s paintings at the Feldman Family Artspace, curated by Featherstone Center for the Arts. Everett’s gemlike landscapes convey her lifelong love affair with the Vineyard.
The 26 oil paintings in the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center lobby infuse the space with light and color. Everett works in plein air, or outdoors. This approach to painting began in France around the 1830s, and became more widespread with the rise of Impressionism in the late 19th century. The invention of paint in tubes in the 1840s and the availability of portable easels contributed to the method’s popularity.
Everett follows in this tradition by taking her artistic materials to various locations around the Island. There are several views in the show of Sengekontacket and Duarte Ponds, Hoft Farm Road, and Chilmark Pond Preserve, but each is unique. While all her pieces are immediately recognizable as familiar locales, Everett’s work steers away from strict realism. Her interest in color and visible brushstrokes imbue them with an abstract quality. Loose strokes of color depict a clear or moody sky, rippling water, and distant trees, conveying the very essence of a scene.
Everett skillfully captures light to convey a precise time of day and season of the year. This is no small feat when painting outdoors, as the light changes from moment to moment. Therefore, the shadows and sunshine are forever shifting. Even though hours may pass as she paints a particular scene, Everett keeps her original vision in mind so as not to “chase the light.” To help, she starts by laying down the basic composition: “That gives you a structure to hang it on. Then you add the light, texture, and color.”
Everett’s visions are unmediated by humans. Almost all have vast vistas, swathes of land receding into the distance that belie the small dimensions of the canvas. She uses substantial frames, reminiscent of the early plein air painters. Many have a golden hue, which picks up the warm tones in her canvases and gives them a regal quality.
While many artists began creating art as children, Everett’s path was perhaps more unusual. Her father was a blacksmith: “I always used to use his tools. And my grandmother got me involved in silversmithing. In high school, I had a workshop in my bedroom.” Everett didn’t start painting until she went to college, and later she earned an M.A. in art and art education at Columbia University. She says about pursuing oils, “I loved the whole visceral sense of the paint — the viscosity, the smell.”
Everett was always drawn to landscapes. “I really like nature and the outdoors. When you’re painting plein air, it’s like a dance. It changes so fast that you are very engaged. It’s the most complex puzzle you could have ever presented yourself.”
As an adult, Everett didn’t paint for many years, with various jobs taking up all her time. In 2018, she jumped back in, and has recently built a studio where she might experiment with creating larger canvases. “Painting small, though, affords a way to create more pieces more quickly,” she adds.
Everett, who spent nearly every summer here from the age of 2 months until she became a full-time resident in 1979, adores her muse: “I want people to feel an appreciation of our natural environment — the beauty of our Island.”
Rebecca Everett’s exhibition is on view through May 18 at the M.V. Film Center. Opening reception on May 4, from 1 to 3 pm.
