In-Town goes ‘Out of Town’ for this month’s show

Local artist Jennie Kirkpatrick is taking viewers on a visual journey “Out of Town” this month at In-Town Gallery. The show opens with a reception Friday evening, Oct. 7.

The subjects, which include a gardener, a shepherd, a hay field and seagulls, represent the scenes that caught her eye during her travels.

Departing from the still lifes she has favored in recent years, Kirkpatrick challenged herself with landscapes in acrylic on canvas for this series. She also gravitated toward genre scenes, an art tradition that depicts everyday life and ordinary people.

Thus were born Kirkpatrick’s paintings of agricultural landscapes, a shepherd with his dog and sheep and a groundskeeper pruning roses. Some of the paintings were done from watercolors painted on location in Italy, others from the American Midwest and some from short drives into the countryside nearer to home.

“I am enjoying the use of acrylic as I like to layer colors for a richness of texture and color,” she says in a statement. “Even painting with a knife gives a painterly textural buildup of paint, which allows the colors of lower layers to peek through. Acrylic dries much faster than oil and is more forgiving, so I can move fast and think slowly to change the composition when I feel it needs improvement.”

In-Town Gallery is open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sundays.