People-Nature-Art with Peggy Clark Lumpkins

Description

Peggy Clark Lumpkins has been a painter for more than 50 years and in that time has developed a distinctive style for portraying nature on canvas. She calls painting a love letter to being alive. “The clearest way for me to say how I feel about what I see is to paint it,” she says. “There are no words to say everything as clearly as I can with my brush and colors.” She starts with joie de vivre, loving the world. “… when you fall in love with a flower, a cloud, or a shape, or a line in the sand … then you begin to paint. Even before you have a canvas the paint has begun to flow. It flows first as a sort of dance inside my being, it swirls around in there and becomes a part of me, at home with all the other paintings that make up myself. The whole world is a painting to me.”

A native of New York City, she began making art in childhood and attended the High School of Art and Design. She began college at The San Francisco Academy of Art, then returned east for her second year at Pratt Institute. But she wanted to paint what she loved, not what her teachers desired, so she took a leave of absence and never looked back. She’s been painting ever since. She moved to Brownville, Maine in 1987 where she built a house and gardens, and raised two sons. “Even though I have been painting for 50 years,” she says, “I still feel like I am just getting started, rubbing my hands together in excitement for the next piece.” Come share that excitement at the Gilley when Peggy is our People-Nature-Art presenter for April 2025.

Free but registration required.