Adrienne Kernan LaVallee makes landscape paintings in a “she-shed studio” nestled into a neighborhood on the shores of Biddeford Pool. She is surrounded by nature, the ever changing colors, light, and energy of the Maine coast which has become the primary inspiration for her work. Born in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, LaVallee began spending vacation time in Maine as a child. Her life long journey as an artist began at her father’s side, he was an accomplished part-time painter. Next came the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth where she became enamored with abstraction and the history of ideas for making art. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, cum laude and moved to Baltimore and The Maryland Institute College of Art for a Master of Fine Art degree. There she studied with Salvador Scarpita and Edward Dugmore and was fortunate enough to meet and discuss aspects of painting with Grace Hartigan, Merriam Schapiro and Lowell Nesbit, among others. In the years after graduate school, LaVallee lived in New Hampshire and exhibited her painting mostly in New England and New York State with early one person exhibitions in Boston, at the former Laughlin-Winkler Gallery, Boston; Conneticut College; Clark University; Colby-Sawyer College; and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Over many years, her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and has received honors including First Place at the New Hampshire Arts Biennial juried by Barbara Krakow. Other group juried show locations include The Barn Gallery, Ogunquit, ME; The Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA, Clemson University, SC; The Schoharie Art Council, NY; and The Providence Art Club, RI. Teaching was a passion for LaVallee, now retired. She taught full and part-time at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH where she was the Assistant director of The Chapel Art Center for ten years. During that time, she was the recipient of two New Hampshire State Artists Fellowships. LaVallee is a founding member of the New Hampshire Chapter of the Women’s Caucus for Art and served on the board of directors for five years. She also served as managing editor and co editor of “Options:The New Hampshire Visual Arts Magazine” for three years. “Options” was supported through a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Education. Journey from Abstraction to Symbolism, to the Landscape In 1995 Adrienne LaVallee applied for and was accepted into a five weeks artist residency at The Crescent H Ranch in Wilson, WY . She intended on pursuing her work which alluded to myth, folk lore and the lives of women but the landscape “swept me off my feet...so I asked the program director if she would mind if I changed my project, of course, she was delighted”. LaVallee had been making small traditional landscapes for a few years but she began a very serious exploration of the landscape while in Wyoming. The Crescent H experience would prove to be ever lasting. “The time spent alone painting and exploring parts of Wyoming , Idaho, and Montana changed my life and the direction I needed to take my painting. Being surrounded by the grand side to nature with no responsibilities except for making art was awe inspiring”. By 2010, nearly all of LaVallee’s output was landscape and she moved, full time, to Maine exhibiting in numerous galleries. The next big change in artistic direction took place in Biddeford, ME when LaVallee changed from painting realist landscape imagery to her current work she calls a form of expressive contemporary Impressionism. “For most of my adult life, I painted and exhibited work but I was also teaching, lecturing, and involved with several arts organizations. After the death of my dear father in 2010 came the permanent move to Maine where I began to focus my prime energies into my art... The work is driven by the world around me as well as a need to fill each piece with a dynamic energy, to make my world a little different, all mine, new”.