On display in the Addison Gallery of American Art, a painting of the two peaks of the Elk Mountains in Colorado stretches across the wall. Created by Artist-in-Residence Sue McNally, the 7.5 by 9.5-foot painting “Maroon Bells” has been on display in the Addison Gallery since December 2023 and highlights the intersectionality between nature and art. This past weekend, the Addison hosted a workshop that welcomed community members to dive into McNally’s creative process featuring a walk in the Cochran Bird Sanctuary and drawing activities.
The workshop took place within the scope of the Artist-in-Residence program, which welcomes several artists to campus every year for varying durations. Jamie Gibbons, Head of Education at the Addison Gallery, emphasized McNally’s ability to find many avenues of engaging with the Andover community and beyond as the Artist-in-Residence.
“The Addison’s Edward E. Elson Artist-in-Residence program started in 1946, and every year we have a couple artists come to campus. Sometimes, they can only come for a couple days, sometimes they come for a week. We’re really lucky that Sue has been able to give us a good amount of time… While she is here she is doing a really large number of things, making work over in the artist studio on the Abbot campus, she is meeting with classes, both Phillips Academy classes and classes who come from off-campus, and she is leading public programs for us and so this [is] one of the programs,” said Gibbons.
While it can be interpreted as abstract, McNally’s art combines various references to American landscapes, such as the Coloradan peaks in her featured piece. She shared that her passion for nature and painting went back to her youth, when she already enjoyed being artistically challenged.
“I make art that exists in the landscape realm, I do large-scale landscape paintings and I also do a lot of side projects like drawings and collages and other things. They move into an abstracted realm but they’re really landscape objects and images. But I sort of look in deeply to something and then create an abstract version of it, that I consider to be landscape still,” said McNally.
McNally continued, “I’ve always been an artmaker since I was a child and I never really had any other path in my head besides doing it. I’ve just always done it since I was young and just kept going my whole life. I find it intellectually satisfying, intellectually challenging, physically challenging, satisfying, and I’ve always wanted to better myself and create new things.”
One main objective of the Artist-in-Residence program is to support contemporary art by inviting both established and emerging artists to campus. Elaborating on her motivations for becoming Artist-in-Residence, McNally pointed to her childhood memories at the Addison as part of what drew her to displaying her art and working with the community.
“Well, [the Addison] is an amazing museum, an amazing collection [and] American art collection, and I’m honored to be part of it. This is the first real museum I ever went into as a kid, so it holds a special place to me that way, and I just think that there’s been a wonderful amount of interesting artists that have come to this program and been here over the years and it’s great to be part of it… It’s great. Everything, the people are great, and I have nothing to say but positive things, my experience has been amazing,” said McNally.
McNally’s “Maroon Bells” is displayed as a part of the larger exhibition “Free Association New Acquisitions and Context,” which examines pieces that have recently been added to the Addison’s collection that highlight new artistic narratives across time and media. Gibbons noted McNally’s piece as one that builds upon depictions of the American West.
“When you’re curating an exhibition, all artwork speaks to each other and the narrative of the exhibition comes from the way the works speak to each other… The Addison has about 25 thousand objects in the collection, and we are always looking at kind of what the strengths are of the collection and then also where we can continue to build, and so Sue’s work speaks to the majesty of that work in particular, the majesty of the American West, which is an area in which our collection is really strong,” said Gibbons.
In the coming months as her time as Artist-in-Residence comes to a close, McNally discussed her ambitions and excitement to continue creating and displaying art for the Andover community to enjoy.
“I’m hoping that at the end of three months, I have a lot of interesting things to show whoever wants to come look at them. It’s a unique opportunity to have this private time away when I make what I want to make unencumbered. In the end, I’m hoping that it’ll be exciting for some kids who want to come see, that’ll be great,” said McNally.
Artist-in-Residence Sally McNally’s “Maroon Bells” depicts Colorado mountains, which is on display in the Addison Gallery.
