Wilton library’s artist of the month explores light in her paintings

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Submitted photo,br> Sheep in Winter Mist by Mary Islelin. She is the featured artist in February at the Wilton Library.

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Submitted photo
Just Myself by Mary Islelin, the featured artist at the Wilton Library in February.

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Submitted photo
Travel by Starlight by Mary Islelin, who is the featured artist for February at the Wilton Library.

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Submitted photo,br> Sheep in Winter Mist by Mary Islelin. She is the featured artist in February at the Wilton Library.

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WILTON – The beauty of winter and the promise of spring are brought to Wilton’s Public & Gregg Free Library this February through the artwork of Mary Islelin.

Islelin is a professional artist who is also a faculty member at the Sharon School of Art in Sharon. Her oil paintings are luminous and filled with light. Having spent the last 30 years on a farm in Marlborough, Iselin finds inspiration for much of her art from the farm and equestrian activities that surround her and make up her life. Farm activities such as gardening, plowing, sugaring and logging with drafts are rituals to her that renew connection to the earth and to beauty. She finds horses to be ambassadors between the realms of spirit, art and everyday reality.

Sheep are wonderful models, she said.

“Even though this may sound ridiculous, their fleece ‘takes the light’ in a way reminiscent of the way Renoir’s models’ skin ‘took the light’ for him,” she said. “I paint sheep or horses the way some artists would paint a bowl of fruit: as a vehicle to explore light, color, atmosphere and, most of all, spirit.”

Living in the shadows of Mount Monadnock, Islelin has developed a recurrent theme, with the mountain in many of her paintings.

“Mount Monadnock is simply irresistible to any artist living beneath it,” she said. “Each year in the late summer and fall, I wonder whether someone will actually issue me a parking pass for my favorite locations on the roads under the mountain.”

Iselin’s work can be found in many private and public collections, both in the U.S. and internationally, and has been featured on “Rural Heritage” TV.

Wilton’s Public & Gregg Free Library, at 7 Forest Road, is open 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; 1:30-5 p.m. Friday; and 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Saturday. Call 654-2581 for more information.