A 2024 Recap
It hardly seems possible that it is time to sit back and reflect upon the past year for The Willard Gallery - our 2024 truly flew by! This business and line of work is a gift to me in many ways and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to keep building this community and supporting our artists, year after year.
I’m especially thankful for how many artists I got to spend time in person with this year. Visiting New England-based artists like John Vinton, Kathy Soles, Ellen Rolli, Jeanine Sobell Pastore, Esther Garcia Eder, Bayard Hollins, and Julie Bowers Murphy is always special to me, but this year I was also able to see artists who live beyond New England, some of them for the first time ever. In the spring, we traveled to Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina to meet Anne Darby Parker at her incredible studio. Over the summer months, Lucy Reiser, Lou Schellenberg, Theresa Drapkin, and Elizabeth Endres traveled to Maine and visited us here at the gallery. In December, Michael & I made a road trip down to Connecticut to surprise Michigan-based artists, Melanie Parke & Richard Kooyman, at a show of Melanie’s. The memory of their reaction to our surprise is something I will always treasure.
Dozens of new works arrived throughout the year, including a special collection from both Julie Bowers Murphy and Diana Forbes - Mainely Speaking and The Picnic, respectively. We added two artists to our roster this year - Lou Schellenberg & Adam Peck. In the fall, we curated a floral show inspired by the first line in a Holly Wren Spaulding poem: Sometimes You Bring Me Flowers. It was a joy to share the work from this collection with friends of the gallery over a festive brunch and show the work of cee & she, Tessa Greene O’Brien, and Bill Tansey for the first time.
We were thankful to see our artists’ work on the pages of four different publications this year: Maine Home + Design, Decor Maine, Veranda, and the Cape & Islands Design Guide. In total, 118 pieces of original art found homes with collectors from London all the way to California & Washington.
Scroll down for some highlights from a very full 2024 at the gallery. For a further walk down memory lane, visit our 2023 recap + 2022 recap + 2021 recap posts.
Press for 2024 kicked off with the work of Ariane Luckey & Julie Bowers Murphy featured in a Samantha S. Pappas project in the Jan/Feb issue of Maine Home + Design.
Though we traveled around through New England to visit John Vinton, Kathy Soles, and Esther Garcia Eder at their studios, the furthest we traveled for a studio visit in 2024 was to Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina to meet Anne Darby Parker for the first time.
New artists for 2024: Lou Schellenberg + Adam Peck.
Paintings by Kathy Soles, Jessie Mackay, and Ellen Rolli were included in Maine Home + Design’s Art Issue, thanks to a feature on a Falmouth Foreside project by Samantha S. Pappas.
A glimpse of Julie Bowers Murphy’s Mainely Speaking collection.
A view of The Picnic collection by Oxfordshire-based artist, Diana Forbes.
Theresa Drapkin’s adorable family traveled to Maine from their home in West Palm Beach this summer; a longtime collector from West Virginia happened to stop by while Elizabeth Endres was here for a visit as well.
I met Julie Bowers Murphy and her sweet pup, Pretzel, in the summer for an art swap; Lucy Reiser made a September trip up to Maine with her young family and we had the chance to meet for the first time!
The very first collage by Diana Forbes to sell from The Willard Gallery was included in a Veranda feature of a stunning Whitney McGregor project on Nantucket.
A Beth Munro grid painting made the pages of the Cape & Islands Design Guide thanks to a bright & beautiful feature on a Digs Design Co. project.
One of my all-time favorite art placements in a bedroom was included in a feature in Maine Home + Design of a dreamy Samantha S. Pappas project. The Jeanine Sobell Pastore landscape is the perfect fit for this serene bedroom.
Our Sometimes You Bring Me Flowers collection launched in October and highlighted the floral works of eleven different artists.
We hosted a morning brunch for artists + friends of the gallery to celebrate our floral collection: Sometimes You Bring Me Flowers. The talented team at Petalage crafted an arrangement for the table inspired by the Elizabeth Endres painting in the background.
The Willard Gallery Tote No. 3 arrived, courtesy of North Carolina-based artist, Kristen Franklin. We couldn’t love it more!
Many thanks to all who continue to follow along with the happenings at The Willard Gallery and support our artists’ work in the process - it means so much to us all. Cheers to the year ahead!
Read More From the Journal
