Current Exhibition-June 2025 - Artists' Cooperative Gallery of Westerly

Current Exhibition, June, 2025 The Annual Flower Show, "Birds, Bees & Blooms"

Wednesday June 4th through Saturday June 29th

Opening Reception Friday, June 6th from 5-8pm

Featured Artists:

Tammy Blais and Janet Maher

and

in the United in Community Gallery:

Southeastern Connecticut Life Drawing Group

©Tammy Blais, City For Love

©Tammy Blais, Party Of Four

©Tammy Blais, Swan Lake

Tammy Blais is an award-winning oil painter residing along the coastline in Connecticut. Influenced by the coast, the beauty of everyday life and things she enjoys, she uses her imagination to create pieces that are unconventional and interesting. She often includes birds, flowers, landscapes and whimsical homes in her paintings. Her use of the palette knife, color, and at times mixed media, all come together wonderfully to create unique and expressive paintings.

Blais creates loose designs in tranquil tones with pops of color. Often Blais will incorporate paper from old dictionaries and sewing patterns into her paintings, to create unexpected dimension and texture. Blais lives her life as a true creative, she states, “When creating a piece of art, my approach is to allow the art to be imaginative and free flowing. I enjoy imperfect lines and shapes, allowing my subjects to be oddly shaped and out of the norm. I focus on pairing colors and allowing texture to emerge.”

Currently, Blais is a member of the Artists' Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, Wickford Art Association, Mystic Museum of Art, Lyme Art Association, and the Essex Art Association. She also participates in various local galleries and several fine art festivals throughout the year. Her work can be viewed at her website www.tammyblaisart.com or her Instagram@tammyblaisart. Blais is also a professional wedding and portrait photographer

See her ACGOW Artist's Page HERE.

©Janet Maher, Emergence #15: Embracing Joy

©Janet Maher, Emergence #14 :Embracing Joy

Janet Maher was born and raised in Connecticut and had a long and varied career in the arts, including in New Mexico and Maryland. After many years of teaching, she retired as Professor Emeritus of Art from Loyola University Maryland. During the COVID pandemic she and her husband relocated to Westerly.

Maher has been exhibiting her work since 1975 and has received numerous awards. She regularly exhibits regionally and nationally. She is also the webmaster for ACGOW. Explaining her gratitude for ACGOW she said, “I appreciate being a member of Artists’ Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, with its entirely different shows every month. This keeps me motivated to continue challenging myself to work steadily and set new aesthetic goals.”

A Signature Member of the National Collage Society, Maher has chosen to work at this stage of her life primarily in mixed media collage or assemblage. Her two-dimensional works usually include some kind of pencil drawing to deepen the visual connections within her compositions. Maher states she loves a challenge, “I set problems for myself,” she says, “like setting rules for a visual game I then play out to completion. I can’t know what the result will be until it arrives.” In her June feature at ACGOW she will show works from three types (among others) of collage that she has been doing—either beginning with hand-marbled papers, book-arts-related materials, or mass-produced ephemera. Her work can be viewed at her website www.circlegardenstudio.com and her Instagram@circlegarden_studio.

See her ACGOW Artist's Page HERE.