The raw beauty of southeastern Connecticut is what inspires Michael McNabney to put paint to canvas. He is specifically drawn to natural phenomenon such as the pitch pines clinging to the rocks on Lantern Hill in North Stonington, a glacial forest in Ledyard, the tide pools that form on the rocky shoreline around the mouth of the Thames River.

The artist, who has lived in Ledyard for most of his 48 years, is exhibiting his newest works in oil energized by these local scenes at Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art in Groton.

McNabney’s compositions tend to focus up close, bringing the viewer directly into his vivid paintings, but although the effect is mesmerizing, he says this isn’t something he intentionally set out to do.

“Throughout my life I’ve tended to paint and create imagery based on motifs in nature, landscapes, but I tend to not really look at panoramic vistas,” he explains. “I’ve always had vision problems — near sightedness, detached retinas, cataracts — which challenges my ability to see and makes me focus in closer to (create) open or cropped compositions where you don’t see the whole (picture).

“I just recently noticed that about my work,” he says. “I think it’s about trying to do something within the boundaries of my limitations.”

On the other hand, he says his use of rich, saturated colors that jump off the canvas is no accident, but an aesthetic preference.

“There was a certain time in history between 1880 and 1920 when painters like Gaughan came along, and Tom Thompson and The Group of Seven in Canada, and Matisse and the Fauvism movement, that all used very saturated colors,” McNabney notes. “In a museum it’s wherever the post-impressionist or expressionist paintings would be. They rarely mixed tertiary colors, almost painted right out of the tube, (choosing) chromatically pure colors.” 

Beginning with Captain Bob

McNabney discovered his artistic leanings as a young child. The impetus was a television show.

“When I was 5 or 6 I’d watch ‘The Captain Bob Show’ at 7 a.m. on Saturdays,” he remembers. “I’d creep downstairs and turn on the TV with the volume low. Captain Bob was this old New England codger with a thick Nantucket accent. He gave drawing lessons every week from a little lobster shack on a dock. They were always nature-based — an osprey or a trout or an oak tree — and you’d draw along with him. It felt almost like a private lesson. I think that’s what really got me into it.”

McNabney’s parents recognized his talent, and when he was about 8 years old they signed him up for private oil painting instruction.

“I took lessons with Dorothy Donath in downtown Mystic back in the ’70s. The (studio) smelled of turpentine and cigarettes and she played great hippie music,” he recalls.

McNabney went on to study art while at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Lyme Academy (now College) of Fine Arts and the Art Students League of New York.

Over the years he’s exhibited New London’s Hygienic Art Galleries and Golden Street Gallery, Mystic Art Center (now Mystic Museum of Art) and Old Lyme’s Cooley Gallery. He maintains a studio in New London with three other artists.

He also completed several murals in New London. In 2012 he was commissioned to paint the “Hard Hat Painters” mural at the Carriage House building as part of the statewide City Canvases initiative. In 2014 he was commissioned to redesign and paint (with Troy Zaushny) “The New London Ladies” caryatid mural on the Hygienic gallery and Co-op building after masons had to re-stucco the wall.

McNabney works in several mediums and styles, including oil paint, encaustic, printmaking and sculpture.

“More than anything else, I paint in oil,” he says. “However, I don’t know if I get bored or frustrated, so I always have two or three different projects going on simultaneously in different mediums. I’ll start chiseling some wood for a woodcut or start ripping paper for a collage or heating some wax for an encaustic.” 

So much beauty in his own backyard

The diverse Southeastern Connecticut landscape is a constant source of inspiration for McNabney.

“I’m an avid fisherman. I like to be around the water. But I also really like rocks, I collect rocks,” he says.

In fact, even McNabney’s vocation is rock-centric. He builds rock walls from freshly quarried stone.

“Lantern Hill is a big rock and the trees — all pitch pines — really look like they’re having a struggle clinging to the rocks,” McNabney observes. “Ten of my 16 paintings in the (AvS) show are of (this location). They grow like bonsais up there. They’re naturally stressed because of the wind and poor soil. The roots are clinging to maybe an inch of soil on bedrock.”

As an artist McNabney says, “The tenacity of life and the thought that life will persevere interests me. The character in those misshapen trees — you can see the struggle and the will they have to live. Nothing will stop them.”

McNabney also completed a series of paintings based around tide pools near the Thames River. Several of those paintings are in the exhibit.

“Those areas after the tide pools go out, where the earth meets the sea — the bones that are left are really fascinating. It’s like terrestrial life got a toehold on these tide pools.”

Ledyard Glacial Park is another muse for McNabney, where he likes to take his dog and paint.

“It’s where the terminal edge of the glacier ended and dumped a massive amount of rocks,” he says. “It’s a really neat place as an artist to go when the sun is coming up or going down, reflecting off these boulders, all orangey and pink.

“It’s all forested now, but I try to picture it 10 or 12,000 years ago,” he adds. “I always look at things and wonder how they were before.”

McNabney says he paints on site about 25 percent of the time if the weather is good. Otherwise, he makes sketches and takes photos that he brings back to his studio to paint from.

“I’m not interested in too much photorealism,” he says. “It’s more about what I feel is visually pleasing. The subject is an initial guide.

“I don’t have any trace of human interference, disruption with nature in my paintings,” he adds. “I like that in a picture because I think that may be fast disappearing in this part of our country, and if you’re going to have something hanging on your wall, maybe you don’t want to see a building.”

This is McNabney’s first time featured in one of the AvS gallery’s group exhibitions.

“I got a preview of the other artists’ work, and it’s a fantastic show,” he comments. “There’s some phenomenal work. Everyone’s style is a little different. I’m thrilled to be there with this group.”

FOUR MORE EXHIBITING ARTISTS

The Early Spring Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture is on view through April 16 at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art, Branford House Mansion, UConn Avery Point Campus, Groton. For hours and more info, call (860) 405-9052 or visit www.averypointarts.uconn.edu.

The other artists in the spring exhibition are:

Jocelyn Braxton Armstrong of Westport: Porcelain sculptures in the form of installations. Braxton “examines issues relating to feminism past, present and future, exploring the causes of gender based violence and inequality, from both a personal and global perspective.”

Michael Francis Donovan of Naugatuck: Found object sculptures. His work “explores the act of preservation,” Donovan states. “I am interested in utility as a means to create a self-sustained existence for my objects. …Each structure implies permanently suspended movement.”

Miranda Girard of Trumbull: Landscapes and still life paintings. “The narrative use of subtle cues of color, texture, and composition present a familiar person, place or object in a fresh way” Girard says, “allowing the viewer to pause, dream, reflect.”

Randy Harter of New Rochelle, New York: Realistic paintings of iconic images. “I find cities and the characters that inhabit them fascinating,” Harter states. “I find the seemingly most ordinary moments are anything but that. At those times the stories and humanity reveal themselves.”