Alfred Vance Churchill, “Church, Early Morning,” from the Rockport Art Association collection.

The Rockport Art Association has a long history - over 100 years - fostering and legitimizing art in this tiny village at the end of a New England penninsula. I was recently invited by the Rockport Art Association to be a guest speaker at their spring opening. Here are my words, a personal appreciation of the RAA, which proved to be an important resource at a delicate juncture in my life, and an account of discovering Alfred Vance Churchill, a RAA artist, in a Michigan loft.

My daughter likes to start a conversation saying, “I have two things….” I have TWO THINGS about the Rockport Art Association

The first is a personal appreciation.

In 1996, I identified as a new mother and a painter.  They are not necessarily compatible, and I was struggling. But my time working as a painter had forced me to be clear on what centered me:  one was living in a place that valued artists and another was a figure drawing group.  

I had lived in one place  - Hanover NH - that was not an arts community.  It valued medicine, finance, stoicism, and cross country skiing.  I felt like an alien there, even though I was studying art and painting almost 100% of my waking hours.  In Hanover - in those years - there was no bookstore, no poetry nook, and no good coffee. That was when I realized how much a community is changed when art is valued.  At the very least I can say - along with cafes and bookstores - an artist culture adds a layer of vivacity to a place; and - without being better able to explain it - I recognized that as missing in Hanover.      

Drawing was critical to me in those years.  As a painter struggling to understand color, form, and two dimensions, drawing made me feel not lost. Everywhere I had lived  - even Hanover - I had a regular figure drawing group..  It was a tiny community of people who usually work alone meeting once a week in a small, dusty room, and there was the gift of the human form.

So when my husband got a job in Salem in 1996, we moved to Rockport because  - as I said to my husband - even if I’m not painting right now because I have a two year old - this is at least a place that values art, and I want to live in that kind of place.   

And then - in the first couple of weeks in Rockport  -  I discovered the Rockport Art Association - right smack in the middle of the town.  It is an institution literally here to honor the legacy of Rockport artists, and to be an exhibition center for new ones.  And it’s right next to the BANK.  And THEN I discovered that the Rockport Art Association had a figure drawing group.  A room downstairs off the alley by the library.  I could not believe I had moved to such a perfect place. 

And here’s my second thing:  Visiting Ann Arbor, Michigan about 6 years ago, I walked into this very cool hardware store in the middle of the city.  It was a 19th century warehouse that felt like a huge barn.  Someone asked me if I needed help.  I said, no thank you, I don’t live here so I’m not buying a wheelbarrow.  He asked where I lived, and I said Rockport, MA, and then he said, “well, now I have to take you upstairs to my office.  In his office on a planked wall was the most beautiful painting I thought I had ever seen of Motif #1, and beside it were glowing canvases of Rockport harbor painted with simple, confident brushwork and a luminous palette.  

These were the paintings of Alfred Vance Churchill, the great grandfather of the hardware store’s owner, and the man who had asked if I needed help.  

Alfred Vance Churchill lived from 1864 to 1949.  He grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, traveled in Europe in the 1890's studying art, taught at Columbia University and exhibited at the Armory Show of 1913 before becoming the director of the Smith College Art Department and Museum.  His biography online says he passed through Rockport at the time of George Bellows and Childe Hassam.  The Rockport Art Association exhibited his work in the 1980's.

So I am grateful to the Rockport Art Association for helping me personally, and for helping to make this town such a special place.  The Rockport Art Association holds the history of people like Churchill, artists working at all levels, who came here because it was a beautiful place to paint, and people cared about that.  And it’s where artists today can become part of that legacy.  

Most importantly, the Rockport Art Association gives creativity legitimacy.  And it gives Rockport artists and Rockport itself  - in the greater world - as proved on a wall in Ann Arbor, MI - relevance.  

Thank you, RAA.