Mrs P, pastel portrait in progress by Melody Phaneuf

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Pink was a good color on Mrs. P, it teased out the rosy undertones in her soft skin and made her eyes appear all the more blue green by contrast. I recall looking closely into her eyes as a child and saw that they weren’t green at all but rather, blue-grey with yellow rings around the pupils. I remember how she loved that particular color that both she and my grandmother called sky-blue pink.

I don’t know how it was that my mother came to be called “Mrs P,” perhaps it was a neighborhood kid that couldn’t pronounce our last name or maybe it was my Italian sister-in-law when she first came to visit from Bergamo. Wherever it originated, the moniker has become an endearment and the way we refer to her now.

Layers of memories unfold as the layers of pastel combine to solidify my mother’s form. Her portrait has become my meditation on her spirit. What reveals the essence of someone? Each day I see some new expression, another recognition of the complexity of the person she was.

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

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Dawn, Bass Rocks~ 20 x 16 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf

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Expressing the wholeness and peace of mind that Nature offers is a tremendous source of inspiration. Painting Nature’s unrivaled beauty and rhythmic flow is rejuvenating. Immersed in the landscape, I feel a sense of connection.

The colors at dawn are soothing; delicate pink skies spill onto turquoise waves. In Gloucester the ocean too, is gentle at dawn, still mesmerized by the disappearing moon. Craggy rocks give evidence of more turbulent moments but for now all is tranquil.

Dawn, Bass Rocks is a glimpse of morning serenity. It’s a new beginning in the timeless rhythm of sea as it meets the shore.

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Echoes, oil study by Melody Phaneuf

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I recently had a conversation with a young artist that I mentor about the brilliance of the early spring light. She sees it as much more brilliant this year. Is it? Perhaps, but I suspect that it has more to do with her growing sensitivity to the visual world. When an artist learns to see, many veils are lifted.

This kind of vision comes with acceptance of the visual experience without reliance on ideas of what we think we see. We think that black is dark and white is light, but visual truth demonstrates a black road in sunlight much lighter than a white house in shadow.

The expanding awareness of visual experience frees the artist to observe fascinating patterns of light and shadow, rhythms of line, firm and melted edges along with textural contrasts. There is delight in the sudden dark punctuation of glowing color by a bird in flight; the world is beheld for its amazing visual interactions.

Perhaps this process is unfolding within my young artist friend. Or possibly, the spring light could just be brighter this year~

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Morningtide by Melody Phaneuf, 25 x 20 oil painting of Gloucester

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Light, movement, and the forces that animate are what draw me into the creative experience. Every painting is a quest to express a certain visual experience, the result of focused attention to the light that reveals color, texture, shape and pattern.

It is a process of unfolding. The abstraction of light & dark shapes build the structure, or what I like to call the mechanism. Rather than what does it look like I am asking myself, ” how does it work?”  When the interaction of parts is established, attention can be given to development of surface features.

Somewhere in this evolution process there is a point of recognition that occurs. The painting mirrors back a combination of what is seen merged with a sense of my self. When this occurs there is a glowing burst of energy and the painting comes to life. This is the creative experience, the inspiration that beckons.

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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In Progress~ Clair de la Lune by Melody Phaneuf

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Finishing a painting is a painstaking process of adjustment. It is a process of seeing the whole and communicating in paint that coherence. Sometimes it’s firming an edge but more often it’s softening a plethora of detail that became too important, undermining the whole. I call to mind the words of a great teacher, Bob Hunter, “when in doubt, simplify.”

The inspiration for Clair de la Lune came from a conversation with a student who returned from Italy with the mask as a gift to me. She was under the impression that red was a particularly difficult color to paint. Since the mask had a cool red in it, it seemed an ideal vehicle to demonstrate painting red, and the Pierrot characterization unleashed fond childhood memories of the song learned in elementary French class. I so love a painting with a story.

Clair de la Lune is very close to finished but any time I say that I can be sure there are another twelve hours ahead of me. Little touches lead to new unfolding and the painting goes on until all is well woven into the structure. It is a satisfying process that when complete, will hopefully engage the viewer.

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Rhythms and Red by Melody Phaneuf, 25 x 17 oil

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Red. Color of the heart, awakened passion, emblem of courage~
Red commands our attention and calls us to action. In harmony with orange and red-violet, red forms the center of a fiery bond.

The vitality of color in Rhythms and Red has a kinship to the rippling movement of light as it bathes forms and energizes the shadows. The painting sparkles with colorful interactions as the eye follows the patterning through the picture.

The combination of scintillating color and rhythmic composition animates Rhythms and Red, making it a charming center of attention.

Rhythms and Red, oil painting by Melody Phaneuf
Rhythms and Red is available in Open Edition Print and handmade note cards

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
Schedule a Studio Visit
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Roadside Cottage by Dennis Miller Bunker

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I recently came across an article with a photo of the house in Medfield painted by Dennis Miller Bunker. I find it gratifying to see how an artist beautifully pictures a most mundane subject.

I admire Bunker’s work and have always enjoyed the light-splashed cottage and soft grasses in this painting titled Roadside Cottage. I can hear crunching footsteps along the pink-with-sunlight path in front of the house. It is an idyllic scene, the kind of vision that one might encounter as a wayfarer, happily enjoying the path on the journey.

I grin to see the photo of the house today certainly not much different than it was when Bunker painted it. It proves to me again that artists provide a useful teaching by showing us how to view daily life with enchantment.

Bunker's Home in Medfield

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Walking in Winter, oil painting by Melody Phaneuf

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The diminished light and softened atmosphere of winter months presents our eyes with intriguing visual patterns. Lower light intensity blurs edges and subordinates minor details. It is a broader view of the world, one that halts us with emotional impact, widening our eyes and resting the reasoning mind.

I see many scenes like Walking in Winter in the early morning and late afternoon at this time of year. I love the softness and the focus on spots of light that arrest my attention. Walking in Winter is a scene that draws me in by the abstraction first, then the recognition that there is something, a figure walking in a hilly, snow-covered environment second. This to me is the exciting bit of experience that I try to communicate with the viewer.

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Humoresque, Self Portrait by Melody Phaneuf

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All good things must come to an end. I am grateful to have had a year of continued good health, energy, and the desire to chronicle positive moments in paint. We live in a changed world that continues momentum forward. It seems to have been an opportunity to reflect on things that money cannot buy.

It all goes by very fast and I remind myself that each day I am constructing memories as I continue to pursue the light and the meaning of things with brushes, paint, and inspiration.

May we appreciate the beauty and find joy in every moment this coming year. And may we consciously build the memories that we will look back on with delight~

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Phaneuf maintains a studio at Fenway Studios in Boston, where she paints and holds workshops, continuing the Boston School lineage.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~
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Village in Snow, 30 x 25 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf

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I am fascinated by the expanse of color that lies in intermediate minor keys. In the narrow interval subtlety seems to expand. It seems infinity can’t be stopped; tight boundaries cause it to spread from the center.

In Village in Snow, minor key conditions are chronicled. From a high Gloucester vantage point, Village in Snow overlooks little houses and Our Lady of Good Voyage bell towers against a backdrop of the harbor blanketed in snow. Within the narrow range of neutral color, the subtle shifts unfold.

The diffused light from cloud cover, along with a haze of fluttering white flakes muffles visual noise. These are the circumstances of light and atmosphere, which seem to kindle an inward gaze. The buildings in the painting appear to huddle together in closeness, as if to stay warm. The people they house are surely at peace. Village in Snow is a quiet moment, a symbol of winter reverie.

Village in Snow, 30 x 25 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf
Also available in Open Edition Print and Handmade Note Cards

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Melody Phaneuf is an award-winning Boston Artist, well known for her evocative still life, landscape, and portrait paintings. She has exhibited at The National Arts Club in New York City, Galerie Herouet in Paris, and with Art du Monde, in Japan. Her paintings are regularly on view at The Guild of Boston Artists in Boston, Ma; North Shore Arts in Gloucester, Ma; and Patricia Hutton Galleries in Doylestown, Pa.

Melody The Artist Home, founded with photographer and color specialist, Martha DiMeo, features Phaneuf’s original oil paintings on tumbled marble tile murals and beverage coasters, fine art prints, and handmade note cards.

Make Your Life a Work of Art~

Schedule a Studio Visit
Commission a Painting
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