The Lyme Art Association will be hosting two concurrent exhibitions highlighting the local landscape.  The first to open, Old Lyme Landscapes: A Salute to Our Founders, will be displayed from June 14th through July 28th.   This exhibition features beachscapes, landscapes and architectural scenes of Lyme, Old Lyme and the lower CT River valley.

Many works will be from local scenes made famous by Lyme Impressionists in the early to mid-1900s.  An opening reception for Old Lyme Landscapes will be held on Friday, June 21st, from 6-8 pm at the Lyme Art Association, free and open to the public.

The 3rd Annual Celebrating Lyme's Beauty event, co-organized by the Lyme Art Association, Lyme Land Conservation Trust and the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, will showcase works created in around the Pleasant Valley Preserve, a large nature preserve in Lyme with frontage on the “Wild and Scenic” Eight Mile River.  This themed exhibition will be displayed at the Lyme Art Association from July 6th through September 1st.  A special opening reception will be held on Friday, July 12th from 6 – 8pm at the Lyme Art Association, free and open to the public, with tax-free shopping that night as well as all day on Saturday, July 13th.

Susan Ballek, the Lyme Art Association’s Executive Director says, “At this time of year, when the beauty of our local area is at its peak, it’s easy to see why so many American Impressionist painters gathered here in the early 1900s to paint.  What is especially unique about our area is that many of these scenes are still as rural and beautiful as when they were painted by Childe Hassam or Frank Vincent Dumond.  That is what these exhibitions are about; to make that direct link from our founding members to today’s painters, and to encourage the appreciation of plein air painting more than 100 years after the Old Lyme Art Colony began.

For more information about Old Lyme Landscapes: A Salute to Our Founders and Celebrating Lyme's Beauty, please visit www.lymeartassociation.org.