Two Greenfield artists are transforming the city’s public library gallery this month. Fran Corriveau hopes her work helps “demystify” the traditional art of painting, while Thom Dudley leans into digital innovation, using an iPad to craft illustrations that radiate “fun and joy.”
Corriveau’s “If I Can Paint, You Can Too” adorns the walls of the Conference Room, while Dudley’s “Images from an Interesting Place” can be found in the Community Meeting Room. The exhibits are on display throughout February and are accessible when programming is not taking place in the two meeting rooms. The galleries are always open for viewing on Saturday mornings from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.
Both of the artists cited different inspirations. Corriveau’s exhibit features seascapes and lakes across Massachusetts, Maine and Canada, including Fitzgerald Lake in Northampton, and Dudley compiled years of his graphic design work for his exhibit.
Corriveau began painting after suffering a series of strokes in 2006.
“I tried to think of how I would develop a new neural pathway. … I went through several things like French and other things, trying to figure out what I might do [to] get around the dead spots in my brain,” she explained. She later added, “I try not to think about what I’ve lost, but what I can do with what’s left.”
She learned from a series of mentors, saying “each one has given me something.” Her muse is Campobello Island, New Brunswick, where she spends her summers. Corriveau explained she enjoys going out at sunset, and either takes a picture of the scenery as a reference for later, or she’ll sit in a spot and paint as the sun goes down.
Speaking to her goal of demystifying painting for exhibit viewers, Corriveau said, “You can do whatever you want and it’ll be OK. … The next one will be different still, but you have to be there with the paintbrush in your hand when the inspiration strikes.”
Dudley’s upbringing included “a lot of art supplies and not much TV.” His father was an art professor at Greenfield Community College, and he and his sister both went to art school. He remembers always doodling in the margins of his notebooks, sometimes during school.
“One year [I was] trying to get better at drawing hands, or one year I decided I was just going to draw lips every day but just make them progressively weirder and weirder,” Dudley said, recounting his shifting areas of focus. The result, he said, is an “uncharacteristically organized little storehouse of things that I’ve made that I can go back through.”
When working in the graphics department one summer for the art supply company Chartpak, he became fascinated with graphic design and commercial illustration. Today, Dudley is a senior illustrator at Brigade, a small Hadley-based branding and creative office.
He hopes that viewers find a “sense of fun and joy” when walking through his exhibit. He said that all of his selected pieces “come from this kind of wandering brain spot.”
“I kind of want people to find something they like that makes them smile, or just interests them visually,” Dudley said.
Corriveau noted that her favorite part of painting is that she sees the world in a new way, especially when it comes to taking a break from work and day-to-day life.
“That’s the most wonderful thing about the whole thing,” she said. “I have different eyes now. … I didn’t see this beauty and now I do. And it’s really a wonderful thing.”