During the worst of the pandemic, Susan Scott Kenney sought solace on long walks. She’s an artist, with an artist’s eye, so she came across a lot of beauty where other people might just see a swamp, a stick in the snow, spent milkweed, a sparrow briefly on a twig.

Typically she’d snap a shot on her cell phone camera, then go home and print it out. Then she’d take a long look at it and see what she could see.

What she saw wasn’t exactly what other people would see.

Once she’s seen it, she roughs out the proportions and perspective on a sketch pad. Then she uses a brush to spread a background color across a canvas.

And then she puts the brush away. She brings out her arsenal of pallet knives, a thicket of stainless steel blades soaking in a few inches of water in a retired plastic pretzel jar.

And then she starts laying down layers. She mixes up acrylic paints, then mashes in a big scoop of modeling paste. With just the right pallet, she smears just the right background of a field, a hillside, a pond, the vague shade of grove, or whatever its she’d noticed on her solace walks.

She works with acrylics, so even though she’s slathering on thick layers, they dry quickly. Soon she can start adding layers of shapes, and then, on top of that, nuances, and then highlights. By the time she’s got it just right, the painting may have ten layers, all of them in some way visible.

The results are astounding. The colors are intense yet subtle. The depth of field is enhanced by the thick impasto. The images are somehow precise yet impressionistically vague, like a memory of a dream. The overall effect is of breathtaking beauty.

Kenney started working with pallets and impasto only a few years ago. But she’s been an artist since she was 5 years old. She actually remembers the moment in kindergarten when the teacher praised someone else’s picture of an Indian more than hers. While some artists might have given up right there, little Miss Scott resolved to be the best.

So she ended up in art school way back in 1971. And she’s been an artist ever since. Also a teacher of art. She’s taught all levels, from K to college. She teaches to see those moments when students leap to whole new levels of vision.

She loves it when a student accidentally strokes, say, ultramarine blue into the trunk of a tree…a mistake, yet…somehow it works. The students asks, “Can I do that? Is that all right?”

Yes, she tells them, you most certainly can do that.

She herself is still a student. Every year she signs up for a course. And every time, she learns something. And then she turns around and teaches it.

And now she has a month-long exhibit at the prestigious Norwich Art Center Gallery at 60 Broadway in prestigious Norwich. It is well worth seeing for the solace that it shares. She sought that solace, found it, and fashioned it as no one else could.

So the exhibit is titled “Seeking Solace.” It can be seen Thursdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m., through November. The public is invited to the opening reception from, 6 to 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.