This year marks the 30th annual "All Paintings Great and Small" holiday exhibition and sale at The Cooley Gallery in Old Lyme, featuring 30 artists from Connecticut and around the country.

The diverse show of contemporary paintings, curated by the Cooley Gallery staff, range from representational to abstract in style and from (including frame) as small as a 4-inch square to 12 inches by 16 inches.

A new spin on the decades-old show is that the works are hung salon-style with multiple pieces by each artist grouped together instead of mixed throughout the galleries.

"The genesis of this was we were looking for a way to make the show more user-friendly," explains gallery owner Jeff Cooley. "It was fun visually in the past to see random groupings of the art. But if you're looking for work by a particular artist, it got confusing."

So, the artists were each given a "wall," where they are displaying between three and 10 paintings.

Cooley notes that this gives viewers an immediate overview of the artists' work and makes the large show easier to navigate.

In addition to the contemporary works, the upstairs gallery is hung with historic small paintings.

Artists talk about seeing the small picture

Pamela Ehrlich of Mystic typically works small, and the six works in this show are part of a series of icons she is creating called "Saints of the Sea."

Ehrlich's paintings combine her ongoing, eclectic interests in art, archaeology, history and religion. She holds an MA in Near Eastern Archaeology from the University of Chicago, and her many studies include graphic design at Rhode Island School of Design and Mitchell College, and icon and illuminated manuscript painting at St. Michael's School of Sacred Art on Enders Island.

"I have been fascinated with the images created down through the centuries to represent enduring human stories we all hold in common. This has informed and inspired my art," Ehrlich says.

The luminosity in Ehrlich's paintings is created by egg tempera paint (a type of gouache), which she points out is "one of the most ancient and archival of mediums." She also embellishes her work with 23-carat gold leaf or palladium (a rare silvery-white, non-tarnishing metal), as well as many precious pigments such as lapis lazuli.

Ehrlich says that what she likes about working small is "The ancient works I admire, such as medieval illuminated manuscript paintings, were small. To view them is like looking through a tiny window into another world. To work on them is like diving into another world."

Michael Viera of Old Lyme has been participating in this show since 1998. He works in oil, both figurative and landscape.

Viera received a BFA in painting from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and an MFA in painting from The New York Academy of Art.

His most recent shows were in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Viera's paintings incorporate haunting light and depth of space and mood with clean geometric compositions. He achieves his unique style with selective brushwork and illuminating glazes.

"Currently I'm making large-scale figurative narratives that involve my two daughters," he says.

Although he doesn't typically paint small, he does make numerous small studies for his large-scale paintings.

"I sorted these studies and reworked the best ones specifically for this show," Viera says.

Viera has six pieces in the show that don't have a common theme besides realism. They range from a horizontal painting of a nude female to a piece titled "600," of six overlapping $100 bills, priced at $600.

"It was part of a series I first showed this summer in art fairs in The Hamptons, where artistic content is insignificant and price and value are paramount," he says.

"I like the immediacy of working small," he adds. "My large paintings can take several years to finish."

Deborah Quinn-Munson's paintings don't fit any mold. She works in oil, pastel, and watercolor; her subjects run the gamut of portraits to seascapes; and she most often combines abstraction with realism. Her work ranges in size from 3 inches by 3 inches to 5 feet by 6 feet.

For the Cooley Gallery show, the Chester resident specifically created a series of eight abstract watercolors.

"I love the powerful statement of a large painting, but a small painting draws the viewer in for a close, intimate look," she says.

"I love the energy of bold brush strokes contrasted with the calm color. The balance of shapes, values, and colors is always my focus."

Quinn-Munson earned degrees in fine art at Wesleyan University and the University of New Hampshire. She also studied at deCordova Museum in Massachusetts, and Lyme Academy of Fine Arts.

Recent honors include Best in Show in a Connecticut Pastel Society National Exhibition and earning the honor of Master Pastelist in the International Association of Pastel Societies.

The abstract-expressionists have inspired Quinn-Munson for many years.

"I've come up with a theory that the percentage of large shapes to small, light to dark value, and warm to cool color is the key to successful design," she says. "My workshops focus on this theory. I get very jazzed up about this — it's great fun!"

Maureen McCabe of Quaker Hill is a collage/assemblage artist who has been accumulating materials for her work for more than 45 years, many from the 19th century.

"This is a century of books with marvelous hand-colored engravings. French and German parlor games were very popular, too," she says.

McCabe does a tremendous amount of research on each of her pieces and combines magic with illusion in many of her works.

"I create worlds of the imagination in a non-linear way, much as Irish writers do in their short stories," she says.

Growing up Irish Catholic in Boston, surrounded by parents, aunts, and grandparents, she says superstitions, the supernatural, and visions were a normal part of life.

McCabe received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She taught studio art at Connecticut College for 40 years.

"My whole life has been devoted to art. Without art, I would not be able to exist," she says. "I think of my life as one big collage, and my interests have been accumulating since childhood. I just have a better understanding of them now."

McCabe developed her PLANET series of five collages for the small works show over the summer and fall of 2016 and says the size of the pieces are in her comfortable scale/range.

"Planets have always been part of my artwork," she says. "I'm fascinated by their symbolic meanings and their representation of worlds beyond our own."

The artists agree that they feel honored to be among the 30 accomplished artists in the gallery's 30th anniversary small works show.

"The Cooley Gallery is a treasure and the other artists are phenomenal — such stellar company," says Ehrlich.

If you go

What: "All Paintings Great and Small"

Where: The Cooley Gallery, 25 Lyme St., Old Lyme

When: Through Jan. 7; Tues.-Sat., 10 a.m-5 p.m., and Sun., noon-4 p.m.

Contact: (860) 434-8807, cooleygallery.com