Adrienne Kernan Lavallée
Contemporary Landscape Painter
Born in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, as a small child, LaVallee began spending vacation time in Maine and this continued almost every summer through 2011 when she and her husband moved to Biddeford by Biddeford Pool.
LaVallee sights her life long obsession with art as beginning at the side of her father when she was small. He painted his entire life and was helpful and encouraged his only child.
“My professional journey began in 1971 and took me to the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth where I studied studio art and art history”. LaVallee earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, cum laude and soon thereafter moved to Baltimore and The Maryland Institute College of Art where in two years she earned Master of Fine Art degree. She studied with Salvador Scarpita and Edward Dugmore and was fortunate enough to meet and talk about art with the program’s visiting artists -Grace Hartigan, Merriam Schapiro and Lowell Nesbit, among others.
In the years after graduate school, LaVallee lived in New Hampshire where she taught at various institutions including twenty years with Saint Anselm College. She has exhibited her paintings throughout New England and New York State with an early one person exhibition in Boston, at the former Laughlin-Winkler Gallery. She has had solo exhibitions at Conneticut College; Clark University; Colby-Sawyer College; and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Most recently her two part retrospective at the Dana Center, Saint Anselm College, Manchester , NH ended in February 2024. She has had work selected for numerous juried exhibitions and has received honors including First Place at the New Hampshire Arts Biennial juried by Barbara Krakow.
LaVallee was the recipient of two New Hampshire State Artists Fellowships; she is a founding member of the New Hampshire Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art; and for several years she served as managing editor and co editor of “Options: The New Hampshire Visual Arts Magazine” . “Options” was supported through a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Education and The NH State Arts Council.
LaVallee’s cites her first serious exploration into landscape painting being in 1995 when she was accepted into a five weeks artist residency at The Crescent H Ranch in Wilson, WY.
“I was newly divorced and being alone, painting, and exploring parts of Wyoming , Idaho, and Montana changed my life and my artistic direction. She continued painting the landscape as well as abstractions for many years, her next big stylistic took place in Biddeford when LaVallee changed from painting realist landscapes to her current work she describes as “expressive contemporary Impressionism”.
LaVallee is represented in Maine by Maine Art Hill in Kennebunk, Blue Raven Gallery in Rockland and Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor.
Her art work is in private collections throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada as well as in Japan, Italy, and England.
I meld elements of expressionism with Impressionism to create landscape paintings featuring big, loose, lush and generally colorful marks. Suggesting the landscape, rather than describing it, enables me to freely employ my own needs for making an interesting composition. Memories, some decades old, along with my observations of the world around me are combined with field photographs, gathered objects, sketches and notes are the references I use while working. What we see doesn’t always translate into an interesting work of art so I add, subtract, and invent elements to create the final impression.
Oil paint is a traditional fine arts medium that remains wet and workable for days, perfect for my needs as a painter. I use the finest professional grade paints. The smell of linseed oil, the richly pigmented colors and the act of applying and removing the paint from the surface of a canvas are deeply satisfying to me. I use palette knives, brushes, sticks, squeegees and sometimes my hands to create texture and establish illusions of motion. The impasto (thick paint) is intriguing in itself, so much so that some of my art is very abstract.
If viewers are moved by my paintings and they evoke a special feeling, memory, or are just visually satisfying, then I have succeeded.
P.S. My work space is light and airy, a cozy she-shed studio nestled into my neighborhood on the shores of Biddeford Pool. We are surrounded by nature, the ever changing smells, sounds, light, and energy of coastal Maine. This informs my work daily.
