SOUTH NEWFANE-Tom Concannon and Ravi Shimpi are proprietors of Willow Vermont, the historic inn that they’re steadily building into an art and wellness retreat center near the intersection of Dover and Auger Hole roads in South Newfane.
And, as both are art collectors, they’re helping Willow Vermont earn a name as an arts destination, with the inn’s annual August exhibits of contemporary realism in the handsomely lit and well-appointed first-floor spaces of the 1899 building.
As they announce this year’s Willow Invitational Art Show, which runs from Sunday, Aug. 23 to Sunday, Aug. 30, Concannon reflects on its origins.
In 2023, the show profiled the Grand Central Atelier (GCA) school of contemporary realism in Brooklyn, New York.
In 2024, an artist’s journey “through that school and beyond was profiled to try to show how that skill is taken in different directions.”
Then, 2025’s show profiled how a viewer hopes “to explore how artwork is a medium for us as people to make contact with something essential about living.”
This year, the Willow Invitational is moving in a “slightly new direction,” Concannon told The Commons recently. Instead of hosting upwards of 40 artists, the set is capped at 16.
“And we’re going from 1–3 works per artist to 5–10 works per: It’s a deeper dive into each artist that we host,” he says. “I’m collecting not only bio statements, but also storytelling from the artists about the work they do.”
He adds that he and Shimpi will “present the art now as a body of work by these individual artists and put forward a range of realist styles and, with some confidence, a sampling of some of the best that’s out there.”
Concannon says they’ve “reached quite far,” with the show to include artists from abroad and across the United States, “and we’ve broadened beyond the Grand Central Atelier, as we’re now including artists trained in other schools of realism.”
All 2026 artists, Concannon explains, trained “in classical technique, but they each use a different approach: It’s not as structure-based [as it had been in the past], but it is skill-based.”
With the directional shift comes a wider range of subjects, including “substantially more landscape work,” as “the artists that have been here doing portraiture and figure work are now moving to other subject matter.”
The unifying theme, Concannon adds, “is painting strictly from life and from nature.” And “departing from the atelier, there’s more ground to look at in realism.”
The atelier, he elaborates, is substantially academic in nature. It’s studio-based, and it adheres strictly to the instructional approach.
“And we wanted to move into the ground that’s being explored by realist painters from life who have sought some kind of voice or articulated some thematic material,” Concannon says.
“So we haven’t walked away” from the atelier mode, he adds, but “we want more mature work” edging into “more magical realism or surrealism which, in our show, will invite people in,” because “it can be clearly surrealist if it is from nature and imagination.”
The 2026 artists include Liz Beard, Scott Garder, Eric Leichtung, Rodrigo Mateo (originally from Argentina), and Carson Rauschenberg, from New York; Marc Dalessio and Emmanuel F. Navarro Pizarro, from Italy; Jordan Hein and Kate Kristian, from Connecticut; Lukas Griffiths and Tori Cole, from Pennsylvania; Chelsea Bard and Tyler Berry, from Massachusetts; Brock Currie, from Oklahoma; Justin Wood, from New Jersey; and Bethann Moran-Handzlik, from Wisconsin.
Within this group, artists have garnered a range of awards and honors, from the Hudson River Fellowship to the La Napoule (France) Art Foundation Residency.
Their works are seen in collections throughout North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan; they’ve been presented in galleries from Cape Cod to California and abroad; and their works have been featured in publications from Fine Art Connoisseur to PleinAir Magazine. They have taught widely from GCA to Skidmore College to University of Wisconsin.
Through research on and feedback from Willow visitors, Concannon has concluded that patrons “are seeking beauty, inspiration, emotional resonance, meaningful experiences, connection with artists and their work, a deeper appreciation of the world around them, and a love of nature and reverence for life.”
“They want to meet the artists and be invited into an ongoing conversation with them,” Concannon says. “They would be thrilled to stay connected to artists after the show and to follow their careers. And they’ll be pleasantly surprised to notice the connection between art making and yogic wisdom.”
Moran-Handzlik paints from direct observation and memory, in all seasons outdoors, and in the studio from memory and from life.
In her words, “there are these phenomenally poetic surprises everywhere; I am trying to tune my antenna with nuance so that I won’t lose the capacity to see them, even if briefly,” she says.
“My hope is to be present in the moment painting, to feel the vitality of life all around me, and to evoke and honor it within the painting,” Moran-Handzlik adds. “I love being outside making a painting; at times language leaves me, and I feel I disappear.”
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The opening reception for the free public show at Willow Vermont Retreat (369 Dover Rd. in South Newfane) is Sunday, Aug. 23, from 1 to 6 p.m.; the closing reception takes place Sunday, Aug. 30, 1 to 6 p.m. A preview is offered Saturday, Aug. 22, by appointment only, as are visits to the show during the week. To arrange a visit, call 802-380-4939 or email Concannon at tom@willowvt.com.
Free parking is available, and assistance is available for those who need it up the four steps to the entrance.
For more information, visit willowvt.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.