Ed Chesnovitch

Ed Chesnovitch’s life-changing moment came not with a bang, but with the soft murmur of a heart engulfed in nostalgia and grief. Until a few years ago, Chesnovitch, an East Sandwich painter, was working in Manhattan as an art director for such business titans as Macy’s, Revlon, and Lord & Taylor. Commuting from the Pennsylvania Poconos and visiting Cape Cod in summer, he had a productive, happy life. Then his mother died.

“It was one of those changes in life, where you have to decide what’s important,” Chesnovitch says. One of the revelations was how much he loved the Cape. So two years ago, he left the Poconos and moved to Sandwich, where he has found the natural world he had been craving. His house, perched on Scorton Creek, opens onto a tidal stream with constantly shifting water. “It’s ever changing,” Chesnovitch says. “I had to live somewhere where I could step outside the door and paint.”

Chesnovitch’s pastels are powerful compositions of the natural world, enticing viewers to enter the canvas’s deeper dimensions. Break Through shows a low, dark sky creeping across the canvas over a burst of sun setting over the marsh. Incandescence, with streaks of light igniting a brilliantly painted sky, is also part of Chesnovitch’s “Sky Series.” In all his work, it seems that something important is happening just below the surface. For Chesnovitch, it might be pure emotion in the guise of beautiful nature.

“Sky is the most emotional part of the landscape for me,” says Chesnovitch. “I’m attracted to a feel of open space.” The power of his skies lies in his talent for taking color and light and turning it into an energy caught at fleeting moments. “I try to capture atmospheric conditions and the envelope of light,” he says.

Today Chesnovitch paints prolifically, often working on 20 paintings at a time, his spirit pulling him from one to another when instinct calls. (He still does creative design as a consultant.)

A graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Chesnovitch studied at The Art Students League in New York City and the Cape Cod School of Art in Provincetown. He is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America and Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod. Constantly enriching his mind—and emotions—is nature in its many forms, just outside the door. As Chesnovitch says, “I’m a student of art always. There’s always something to learn.”

Ed Chesnovitch’s art may be seen at the Left Bank Gallery at 8 Cove Road in Orleans and 3 West Main Street in Wellfleet (leftbankgallery.com); Dragonfly Fine Arts Gallery at 91 Dukes County Avenue in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard (mvdragonfly.com); and at chesnovitch.com.

Elaine Coffee

Until 20 years ago, the painter Elaine Coffee focused her art on simple, solitary figures. Then she visited the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and realized she was more captivated by the other patrons than she was by the art. It was a quiet but significant moment. Coffee’s style took a turn toward convivial interiors with intriguing characters eating, drinking, and talking. She had a new zest for her work, and art collectors responded.

“People began to say there were so many things to look at in my paintings,” Coffee recalls of that switch in direction. “Now I love painting people; they almost come to life in my head.” The first ones she did, of the Metropolitan Museum’s interiors, gave her a chance to paint both people and the paintings. “It was a pleasant double-edge sword,” she says.

Coffee’s art reaches out and grabs the viewer. You want to be in these paintings, where people are living the good life in some of its sharpest moments: engaged in conversation, enjoying good wine and food. Lo the Land Ho and Jazz at the Roadhouse depict convivial gatherings at two of the Cape’s popular eateries. “All these paintings in bars,” Coffee muses. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

A resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, Coffee summers in Orleans and travels to gather ideas for her paintings. She loves playing with lighting and composition. Sizing Up the Competition, an oil painting of young women draped over a fence at an equestrian event in Vermont, is a humorous take on how humans behave in groups, especially when they are competing. “There is an amusing scene here,” Coffee says of the painting. “To me, that was perfect.” There are fascinating tales in all her work. Often, they are told with values instead of storytelling, engaging the viewer and keeping the eye moving around the canvas.

Coffee studied biochemistry in college, then transferred to New York City to study art and dabble in medical illustration. Eventually she moved to advertising and writing before embracing fine art, where her illustrative touch found a warm home.

What Coffee calls her “slice of life” paintings were a natural progression from her figurative work. “I started doing shows 20-something years ago (in Scottsdale),” Coffee says. “People didn’t seem to get the meaning of a solitary figure, so I pushed the figure back. The more I pushed back, the more I got into it.”

Elaine Coffee’s work may be seen at Tree’s Place, located on Routes 6A and 28 in Orleans (treesplace.com), and at elainecoffee.com. New work can be seen starting Memorial Day weekend.

• Posted in Art, Arts & Culture

Carole Ann Danner

Carole Ann Danner gives new meaning to the concept of a working artist. She is committed to her painting and knows that getting better takes discipline, stamina, and energy. “My personal goals are to be self-motivated, self-disciplined, and self-directed,” Danner says. “You’re your own best critic.”

Studying with mentor Jim Peters and inspired by his use of dark lines, Danner enrolled in a collaborative program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. After graduating, she continued to learn—through mentors, fellow artists, and museum visits. Today she paints at least 20 hours a week at the Shirley Blair Flynn Center on Pearl Street in Hyannis, juggling work as a bookkeeper and caregiver.

Danner looks to many sources as creative wells. “I’m a studio painter, working from life, photos, memory, imagination, and poetry,” she says. Currently she is working on a painting based on Cape Cod poet Mary Oliver’s work, “The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water.”

Danner’s artwork, a blend of realism and abstraction, continues to evolve. Her figurative work and landscapes are energetic, intuitive, and emotional. It is imperative, she says, that the art “moves me emotionally and physically.”

Vertical lines and rich color are prominent in many of her pieces, such as Jack’s Wharf 2. “I love line, form, shape, color, and structure, whether it’s rocks or a wharf,” says Danner. “I need a structure.” The dark lines, she says, are “a repository to put the paint in.” Some of her landscapes are done in encaustic, or hot wax, for its sculptural texture. Playing with a blend of realism and abstraction, she says, is the most fun. “You’re playing with all the possibilities and choices.”

A couple of years ago, Danner created a series called “Mothers, Aunts, and Grandmothers” after being inspired by her 80-year-old mother-in-law, who is wheelchair-bound. “I tracked down interesting seniors with stories to tell,” she says.

Danner asks a lot of herself, making constant value judgments about her work, always striving, she says, for “something that has a presence, is authentic.” And always, she says, it is done by keeping her options open and continually asking herself, is it working?

Carole Ann Danner’s work may be seen at both locations of the Julie Heller Gallery at 2 Gosnold Street and at 465 Commercial Street in Provincetown (juliehellergallery.com), and at caroleanndanner.com. Heller’s Commercial Street location is featuring Danner’s work August 17-30.

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Jack Dickerson

Whether it’s Lady Crab 2 Riding in Swirling Kelp, from his new “Crustacean and Shell Series,” or Big Fall Maples, Jack Dickerson’s acrylics exude reverberating, wonderful color.

It’s no surprise that nature, the wellspring of creativity, is his guiding force. “My painting is about discovery and exploring,” Dickerson says. “I’m always looking for new color or composition experience,” he says. Since the day he and his wife, artist Kate Dickerson, moved to Brewster two years ago, he has been intrigued with the local natural world. “When we moved here that winter, I started walking on the Brewster flats, when everything washes up on beach,” he says. “I take these tiny things and make them big, to show their beauty.”

The couple’s house isn’t one of Brewster’s majestic antique homes, but a contemporary design in French-Italian style. Dickerson’s mother was Dutch, and Dickerson went to school on a Ford Foundation grant in Switzerland, so the European mood suits him. In a large attached home studio, Dickerson displays his colorful oils, along with his very different calligraphic “Rooster Series.”

“Painting is a very complex thing,” he says. “There are so many problems to solve. I try to be buttoned up, but loose enough so it can go wherever it wants to go.”

Dickerson began focusing on his art after his career as a graphic artist eventually led him to a period of reflection. “I thought, there must be something more,” he says. He studied for a time with Wolf Kahn, a studio assistant of Hans Hofmann’s, clearly a high point for Dickerson.

He considers himself a risk-taker, likely something that dates to childhood. “We lived in Connecticut in the woods,” he says. An illustrator who lived nearby set up young Dickerson with art materials. When he wasn’t creating artwork, Dickerson sailed, hung out in marshes, or packed up sandwiches and went adventuring. “Those two elements played an enormous role in what I paint,” Dickerson says. The ocean so nearby in his boyhood and today—its inhabitants, boats, and flotsam and jetsam—shows up in its many guises. He is also drawn to trees, and paints their colors in vivid brushstrokes.

Today, art is a large part of his inner consciousness. “People ask me, ‘why do you paint?’” Dickerson says. “I say, because I have to. You could say it’s a calling; I don’t know. I’m just doing it. I’m trying really hard to just let it flow.”

Jack Dickerson’s work may be seen at Dickerson Gallery at 1050 Rt. 6A in Brewster; and atdickerson.com.

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