Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Arts Playlist: Historic Odessa Foundation presents Dover artist's work

Submitted Photo

There’s a new exhibit on display in the Visitor’s Center Gallery at the Historic Odessa Foundation in Odessa.

The exhibit is called From the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to the Mispillion River: One Artist’s Portrayal.

It showcases the work of Delaware artist and Dover native Earl Abbott Jr, who

specializes in realistic portrayals of marine and agricultural landscapes in Delaware through both plein-air and studio paintings.

 

 

“Back in the late’80’s when I started painting more deliberately, I started traveling around - again, I was a Dover native, so I knew a lot of these places - primarily landscapes - and I started noticing a lot of development was happening around Kent County, specifically around West Dover,” Abbott said.

Abbott says there were “for sale” signs going up on many of the farms he spotted in his travels, so he started documenting them by taking drawings and photographs that he could later paint.

 

 

The exhibit at the Historic Odessa Foundation, which runs through Oct. 13, 2019, showcases 40 of his landscape paintings.

 

He concedes it’s hard to pick a favorite, but notes one recent piece that brought him further north than usual.

 

“I did it last winter when the snow - one of the snow scenes - and it was a plein-air study, where I took my easel right out - and my paint box right out on site at Dragon Run Park in Delaware City and painted the Delaware City Refinery.”

Abbott has been painting professionally since 198, calling it very therapeutic. 

 

You can read more about Abbott and the Historic Odessa Foundation here

 
Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from theDelaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.