KEENE VALLEY — Artist Wendy Sheasby and gallerist Martha Corscaden’s mothers were friends.
“I’ve known Martha for a very long time,” Sheasby said. “I grew up in Keene Valley, and I since moved to the Hudson Valley, which is similar. I keep transporting myself back to the Adirondacks though.”
Sheasby is a newbie to the Corscaden Barn Gallery Art Show 2025, which opens from 4:30-7 p.m. Thursday at 58 Beers Bridge Way in Keene Valley.
Artist Tim Fortune and Nip Rogers are two more newbies to join artist Michael Gaudreau, Dennon Walantus, Kate Gaudreau, Sandra Hildreth, Eliza Twichell, Stephanie DeManuelle, Sid Miller, Garrett Jewett and Poppy Gall.
ADIRONDACKED
The Adirondacks continue to impact Sheasby’s work, though she moved to Rhinebeck, New York, seven years ago and co-founded Art Gallery 71 located at 71 E. Market St. in Rhinebeck.
“I capture inner memories,” she said. “These are my emotions as I respond to the landscape. I have five works in the show. They are Adirondack related. Some are abstract, whimsical. I do intuitive expressions of events and places.”
Sheasby’s medium is oil.
“I’m addicted to oil,” she said. “They don’t dry quickly. They are more malleable and the colors, the palette is phenomenal.”
Her canvas sizes are medium- to large-format.
“I haven’t gone beyond 40 inches,” she said. “Often, they ask you to do a small painting. I don’t want to go back there.”
Her process starts with charcoal, and then she sketches it in.
“That’s it, and then I start with my palette and that varies depending on the subject matter,” she said.
Sheasby seldom uses studies or photographs for reference.
“Mine are really primitive,” she said. “I’m deeply rooted in art. I’m pretty much self-taught. I did go to Woodstock School of Art for three semesters when I first moved here to touch up my skills. But, I’ve been painting all my life.”
TIM FORTUNE
The Small Fortune Studio, located at 76 Main St. in downtown Saranac Lake, is 31 years old.
“That’s nuts,” Fortune, a graduate of Temple University and New York University, said. “I love it there. I go there five days a week, sometimes six in the summer and people can see me working there — my little gallery.”
Fortune and Corscaden’s paths had never crossed before.
“Martha came in, and she was very persuasive and we worked it out where we were both comfortable,” he said.
Fortune has seven pieces, all watercolors of various sizes, in Art Show 2025.
“Two that are rather large, and five others that are what I would consider small or medium size,” he said.
Corscaden came to his gallery.
“And, we worked together to choose which ones would be the best for the show,” Fortune said. “Martha has a good eye, and she had a vision of what she wanted on this one particular wall. She went ahead and chose them, and I think she chose well.”
The largest work, “Reflection,” is a monochromatic painting, brown-sepia tones, lights and darks, of rocks and water.
“It’s a vertical piece,” Fortune said. “It’s about 4 feet in height and about 20 inches wide. That’s the anchor to the wall. You’ll be able to see it from the end of the gallery, and that’s what she wanted.”
The painting is of a specific location but Fortune can no longer remember where.
“It could be anywhere because like I said, there’s no definable features that would locate it in any particular place. It’s kind of a nice generic, reflection of rocks and water in a stream,” he said.
The next larger work, 40 inches by 40 inches, is monochromatic shades of green.
“And that is a location on our property in Bloomingdale,” he said. “It’s a line of poplar trees. It’s quite detailed. It’s not as dramatic as ‘Reflection.’ It’s a piece that people refer to as calming. It’s very subtle in its coloration.”
Fortune focused on watercolor in 2007.
“I really haven’t done oil since 2007. I fell in love with the large format watercolors and the unexpected results you get while your actually painting. It’s more exciting for me than oil, which is more predictable for me,” he said.
It’s rare for Fortune to show outside of his own gallery, though he was the first solo artist featured at Keene Arts. He is among five artists invited by artist Anne Diggory to paint on location on the Ausable watershed for her “Follow the Water” exhibition, which runs through July 27 at Keene Arts.
“It’s nice because people in Keene and Keene Valley are art-loving people, and they appreciate good art, so that’s another reason why I was happy to show,” Fortune said.
NIP ROGERS
In Art Show 2025, Rogers’ post-COVID series “Ways” centers on pathways, roadways and waterways absent of humans.
“I was thinking about what it would be like during COVID when no one is moving around,” he said. “Everybody is staying home, that type of thing. So, the roads and the paths are all empty. That’s mainly where it came out of, most of the pieces. They’re my interpretation of what the Adirondacks look like to me.”
Rogers remembers visual cues to navigate terrain and remembers what roads look like from a bird’s-eye view.
“I don’t know if that’s something I innately picked up over the years. I always can envision what something looks like from above like a blueprint of a house or something like that, but it’s with nature,” he said.
The Wilmington Notch is the subject of his main work “The Notch,” which is surrounded by smaller paintings.
“I’ve always traveled that and always been interested in how that looks with the wall on one side and you got a cliff on the other,” he said. “It’s a really winding road, and in the wintertime it’s brutal. A lot of people are frightened of coming up here because of those kind of roads, but I found them almost soothing to me.”
His associations with the hazardous passage is cushioned by travel to his family’s Silver Lake camp.
“There are like 43 of us or something like that,” he said. “They’re cousins. Everybody chips into it. It’s Silver Lake, so you have to go through the notch to get there. So it’s always had really great memories. We’re headed to camp. We’re going to see family. I’m going to see cousins. I’m going to see people that I haven’t seen since last year or 10 years. That’s what those paintings are about for me. I, in a lot of ways, make them abstract. In the ways that I am doing the shapes and the trees. They are not exactly correct, but it’s my thing. It’s my style.”
“The Notch” is acrylic on cardboard, and other works are on wood panels and one on canvas.
“I’m working on all sorts of different things,” he said. “I’m experimenting with three-dimensional stuff at home, too, doing some little sculptures.”
Rogers used cardboard to pack other works he was mailing before he decided to paint on it.
“I paint on everything that is available,” he said. “I’ve been experimenting with paper mache, that type of thing, and painting on that. It’s not too different from painting on canvas or paper. I’ve been painting on paper, too, for years. A bunch of pieces that I’ll glue down on a piece of wood or a backing to be framed.”
Rogers loves outsider art, follows many outsider artists and collects some of their work. He studied art at George Washington University on a full basketball scholarship, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in arts and a master’s degree in fine arts.
“I think my main influence comes from being an illustrator for so long,” he said. “That definitely influences my painting.”
Rogers was familiar with fellow Corscaden artists — Fortune, Hildreth and Walantus.
“It’s the first year, and when I got invited I was over-the-roof excited about it because I had heard about this,” Rogers said. “When Martha called me, I felt like wow.
“I’m sure it was Sandra or somebody like that who mentioned me, then she looked me up. Yeah, I was over the moon to hear. I went over and hung my stuff with her. I got to know Martha. Got to see some of the work of some other people. I’m really excited to be in this show.”
