Maggie Stanley is a largely self-taught artist born and raised in Massachusetts. Her parents brought—sometimes dragged—their kids on many nature, history, art, and science outings, which provided rich visual imagery. Recognizing Maggie’s draw to fine art, her mother made sure that places like the MFA, Gardner, Peabody Essex, and deCordova museums became familiar fixtures. She also arranged a few oil painting sessions with a close family friend and painter, Marcia Smith, and signed Maggie up for occasional weekend and summer art classes for children at deCordova. Through her academic and business careers, Maggie created art “on the side,” mostly on small paper, sometimes offering pieces as gifts or prints for sale. In the past seven years, Maggie started doing digital art and painting canvas pieces in acrylics. Realizing that she’d like to take classes again, she joined a Monday night oil painting class at The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord.

The idea for Flora(l) Portals came about this past spring when Maggie saw the Morse Institute Library’s light-filled atrium. Flora(l) Portals was created with this atrium in mind. Maggie’s multi-step process begins with photos of flora collected from her travels. She applies light acrylic molding/modeling paste to a primed canvas using tiling trowels and cake decorating knives to create a stucco-like texture. Then a rust-colored undercoat is applied. Using an iPad, Maggie digitally edits each photo, then traces a simplified black and white sketch over it. She then projects the digital sketch onto the prepared canvas and roughly traces the image with a large pigment art marker. She keeps the floral photo near the canvas as she works with acrylic paints.

Flora(l) Portals represents Maggie’s first solo show, and these are the largest pieces she has created to date. By the time Flora(l) Portals is hanging, most of the flowers represented will have passed for the year. Hopefully the images will bring joy and a resolution to appreciate the miracle of (sometimes fragile) beauty whenever it is present.

Meet the artist reception: Sunday, October 6 from 2pm - 4pm, Morse Room

Maggie Stanley

Marianne Orlando is a landscape architect turned freelance illustrator. She’s illustrated six books. Since 2016, she’s done more than 150 portraits of homes, pets and people all over the US. She sells artwork at The Thoreau Society, Concord, MA; and illustrates the Mass Hort newsletter, The Leaflet, among other venues. She thanks her artist mother and architect father for buying her markers upon noticing that she was drawing people with pockets when she was 4 years old. She never went to art school and creates whimsical drawings, which got her into trouble with landscape architects and a teacher who once told her to put her head on her desk for coloring outside the lines.

Marianne Orlando

The DAR is a women’s service organization. Its members have an ancestor who contributed to the Revolutionary War victory. Today’s DAR is dynamic and diverse, with over 185,000 members in 3,000 chapters in the US and abroad. DAR members annually provide millions of hours of volunteer service to their communities. DAR chapters participate in projects to promote historic preservation, education, and patriotism.

September 17-23 is Constitution Week, established by a Congressional Resolution proposed by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). President Eisenhower signed the annual celebration into law in 1956. The weeklong observance highlights the events of September 17, 1787, when delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution outlines a set of national principles, the organization of the federal government, and its powers. It is the world’s longest-surviving written charter of government. Its first three words – “We the People” – affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens. The United States Constitution has been a model for governments worldwide, especially regarding the rule of law, separation of powers, and recognition of individual rights.

DAR: Wayside Inn Chapter