HARDWICK – Lulu Wootton of Craftsbury is having a show of over two dozen of her prints and paintings at the Hardwick Town House this month until July 24. These works are very lively and colorful; frequently of animals with a whimsical imagination.
She says in her artist’s statement, “My art allows me to allegorically present and document my insights of the world that surrounds me. I seek a balance to the current political brutality with images that depict the joy and kindness, grace and respect that are still strong elements of our lives today, despite the many confusions and fears of our era.”
She has been making prints for about 10 years and has taught her craft at Sterling College and in the Wonder Arts program, as well as exhibiting widely in the Northeast Kingdom.
Describing the print process, she says, “I enjoy it when unexpected or startling images emerge from the carved lines and color overlays, noting that “printmaking can be particularly spontaneous and surprising.”
Her prints in black and white or color show flocking birds in almost abstract patterns (“Taking a Garden, This Way That Way”), a chicken in front of a hen house. (“Oh, the Fox is in the town”), a cat with a butterfly (“All I ever Wanted”), a duck by cattails and water (“Little Hosmer”), an oversized ant (“Aunty, in several permutations”), a rabbit caterpillar, pig and bird in a horizontal format (“Parade”), a turtle (“The Snapper”) and a mythical bird (“Phoenix”).
The circus is another theme, as with a figure in the spotlight juggling (“Drama”), a clown with a circus tent in the background (“Oh, Joy”), a person on a trapeze (“Daring”), a seal balancing a ball on its nose (“Balance”), and two performers entering the circus ring, the smaller upside down on top of the other (“Ja Da”), Apparently Wootton’s father was connected to the circus at one point in his life.
Other subjects are a covered bridge (“Still Life in Darkness”), a town in Croatia (“Evening on the Hill, and variations”), flowers in a vase somewhat precariously on a railing (“Out on a Ledge”), a large six section print of a shadowy figure in a winter landscape, and an amusing piece of three couples of dancing caps (“Arm and Arm with Joy”). All these prints are well composed with vibrant lines, harmonious colors, positive and negative spaces of the underlying white paper, a good sense of proportion and interesting visual textures and rhythms.
Her paintings are on a different bigger scale and more architectural in their settings. Quite delightful is one with sheep and pigs leaning over a fence observed by a cat in the lower left, surrounded by lush flowers. Similarly comic is one with a white ermine standing up inquisitively in the interior doorway of a house. Not infrequently ermine make their way into people’s homes in the winter. A smaller painting of a house and trees is quit colorful, while another of an inside stairway is a bit mysterious.
The Hardwick Town House will be open on Thursday evenings at least an hour before the 7:30 p.m. performances of the Craftsbury Chamber Players and possibly at other times.
David K. Rodgers
David K. Rodgers is a writer, mason and card carrying dilettante, who dabbles and babbles in art. He has lived in East Craftsbury for the past 40 years.
