The May- June Show at the Top Shelf Gallery will be “Natural Beauty” featuring landscapes, florals and figurative pieces by Stacey Gendreau. Gendreau was raised on a dairy farm in Ashford, and has retained a love for the outdoors, which she expresses in both painting and woodworking. She first came to love art through high school art and woodworking classes. Later she received a more formal education, first from Pat Donahue and later from Virginia O’Brien, both local artists.

Although she started out in acrylics, Gendreau now works mostly with oil on canvas and particularly enjoys painting the natural world. She works primarily from her own photographs, carefully considering the base colors and then building layer upon layer to capture images in a photo realistic style.

Gendreau worked for many years at both Windham and Backus Hospitals and has for 27 years been a volunteer EMT for Hampton and Chaplin. She sees attention to detail as key “whether in dealing with a medical emergency or creating a work of art”. As emergency medicine is a high pressure job, she finds peace in art and nature. “For me my small art studio is at times a place to focus on my art and other times a spiritual sanctuary. When in my studio, working on an art project, the stresses and worries of daily life can gradually fade into the background.”

Besides painting, Gendreau builds furniture to her own designs, using many traditional hand tools. She sees both her painting and her furniture as a way to connect to the natural world. “When I paint images of Native Americans and nature,” she says, “I feel a closer bond to Mother Earth, and a more harmonious way of living. Long walks alone in the woods ground me and allow me later on to feel one with the wood when working with it.”

Janice Trecker