Ethel Engler
The Top Shelf Gallery April-May show features landscapes by award-winning Hampton artist, Ethel Engler. She finds her favorite subjects in Eastern Connecticut and on Martha’s Vineyard, and some of her images will surely be familiar to area residents. Her work has appeared in many regional juried shows, most recently at the 74th Annual Connecticut Artists Exhibition and the Meadow Life Regional Invitational at the Slater Museum in Norwich. In both 2016 and 2017 her work was honored, including Best in Show (2016) at the Arts of Tolland, and she has received the Richard Whitehouse Memorial Award at the Marlboro Arts Center. Her work has also won awards at the Artists’ Cooperative Gallery in Westerly, RI., at Arts Center East in Vernon, and the 2017 Piedmont Regional Art Show in Somers. She has shown at the West Hartford Art League and been represented in shows at the Jorgensen Auditorium Gallery at UConn.
Engler says that her main interest is “in light and atmospheric representations” and that she works both “en plein air and in the studio.” Although she has done handsome portraits and floral pieces, landscapes in oil remain her chief focus. A graduate with degrees in psychology and art from UConn, Engler subsequently studied with a number of prominent painters, including Eastern faculty members Lula Mae Blocton and Qimin Liu.