NEWFANE-Spanning a range of styles, media, subjects, and decades, a new exhibition covers three generations of a family of fine artists.
“The Family Tree” features works in oil by Cicely Aikman (1923–2013); landscapes in oil and drawings on scratchboard by Aikman’s husband, Fred F. Scherer (1913–2013); figurative works in thread-on-fabric by Fred’s daughter and Aikman’s stepdaughter, Deidre Scherer, of Williamsville; landscapes and abstractions in oils and acrylic paint by Deidre’s daughter, Gianna Robinson, of Newfane; and oil painting in both figurative and landscape genres by Robinson’s sister, Corina Willette, of the Hudson Valley.
Fred Scherer painted for more than 80 years, starting as a teenager, then moving on to apprentice at — and soon master — diorama painting at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, where he created evocative scenes for 38 years.
After retiring in 1973, Scherer and Aikman moved to Maine, where for 30 years Scherer focused on his own painting. He continued to paint after the couple moved to southern Vermont.
Having exhibited at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and at the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, his work is in the collections of the Maine State Museum and the AMNH, and in many private collections.
Of his work, Scherer wrote, “I like the strong light of New England, the way this light burns into objects in the landscape and falls on different levels of the ground. I study the zenith light of a gray day, the light of sunshine, the cloud shadows on mountains. By looking for the negative, I find the positive.”
Aikman, who grew up in Texas desert country and on the Pacific coast, credited these early environments as a long-lasting influence on her work. After studying art at the University of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York City, Aikman painted winters in New York and summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts; later, she painted in both Florida and Maine.
Aikman had written that she “fell in love with Maine’s incredible ocean and mountain landscapes, vigorous weather, and the committed artists who had settled there. Fred and I lived on a tidal cove in Friendship, where the physical changes in the landscape continually astounded me.”
As part of New York City’s Loft Generation of the 1960s through the 1980s, Aikman joined with the Pyramid Group collective there and exhibited with acclaimed artists such as George Morrison.
After moving to Brattleboro, she wrote, “I concentrated on writing, but the visual world surrounding me continues to pound on my heart and spirit and remains a constant source of inspiration.”
Deidre Scherer was educated as an artist first by her father and then at the Rhode Island School of Design. First working in oils, charcoal, and pencil, Scherer turned to fabric, with which she honed her narrative approach to thread-on-fabric medium, using scissors and a sewing machine as drawing tools.
Represented by Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts in Brattleboro, Scherer has exhibited in over 200 shows over the years and is in collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, the Bennington Museum, the Crowell Gallery’s permanent collection, and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Her solo shows, “Surrounded by Family & Friends” and The “Last Year,” have displayed in the United States, Japan, England, and Canada.
Of her work, she writes “I continue to expand my approach to thread-on-layered fabric, pioneering the figurative potential of this medium. Fabric awakens physical memory through its tactile associations.”
Scherer says that the “detailed textures and pointillistic patterning of cloth actively engage one’s eye, making it the perfect vehicle with which to translate human elements that are layered, complex, non-verbal, and even invisible.”
“I am looking for the voice and the presence between the threads,” she adds.
Gianna Robinson grew up “surrounded by artists in Williamsville,” she says in her show biography, with a creative spirit nurtured by her mother and grandparents, who shared “the belief that art is essential to life.”
Robinson studied art locally and earned a degree in women’s studies at Smith College in 2006. Largely self-taught through years of studio practice and by the mentorship of her grandparents, she has “reclaimed painting as both a creative calling and a lifeline.”
Now working in both landscapes and abstractions, her artist’s statement explains, she “explores the restorative relationship between nature and the human spirit. Influenced by the woods, streams, and changing seasons that shaped her childhood,” creating “expressive paintings that invite moments of peace, reflection, and renewal.”
“I create art as a way of connecting — with the natural world, with memory, with possibility and hope, and with the unseen connections that continue across time,” she writes.
Corina Willette earned her bachelor of fine art degree from New England College, then worked at Galerie St. Etienne in New York City, where she studied at the New York Academy of Art and the Art Students League.
With an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, she currently teaches there, maintaining a studio in the Hudson Valley. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England and New York and is, according to a show description, “attentive to themes of connection, longing, belonging, and community.”
“I create narratives using bold colors, unexpected comparisons, and humorous and melancholic characters,” Willette’s artist statement notes, adding that she “explores stories that emerge from personal experiences — often feelings or moments that linger, shaping an emotional landscape.”
Weaving images together to “evoke a sense of the magical or mystical in the everyday,” she says, “my interest is in the space between the seen and the unseen, exploring multiple realities within a single canvas.”
Honoring the legacies
In the Crowell Gallery works of these five are interspersed.
There, Deidre Scherer points to a wall on which hangs her portrait of her father, flanked by two of his landscapes. “In honor of the patriarch,” she says.
She notes how the yellows and oranges of her thread-on-fabric work there flow through her father’s similarly-toned landscapes. She says that she and her daughters “wanted to mingle what things affected us: I’m the one in the middle, so I get the effect from above and below.”
“When we were hanging this, we had all kinds of things going on,” Scherer recalls, pointing to a portrait that she and her father made of Aikman and to a double portrait by Willette to its left. A flow of color and stroke moves from one piece to the next, the eldest generation to the youngest.
“The greatest influence my grandparents and mom had on me was that making art is important work,” Willette recalls. “That one can spend a life doing this and it is meaningful. This I saw in all [their] life choices.
“Once as an adult I went over to Fred and Cicely’s house to paint outside with Fred and my sister. We stopped to eat lunch. Cicely made us meatloaf; I offered to wash dishes after, and Fred said, ‘No you should paint. There’s no time for washing dishes.’ And he did the dishes himself so I could paint.”
Noting the complexities of influences, Willette says, “Fred’s observations about how to look at a cloud, and how to brighten a painting by darkening parts of it has stayed with me. On a formal level, Cicely’s use of color and her strong flat areas in a painting have influenced my work. My mom’s understanding of form and draftsmanship have influenced me.”
Robinson says of her mother, “She’s like the ultimate artist.”
Naming the high frequency of recognition and praise she saw her mother garner, she says, “I grew up with enough of it that I questioned my ability” as an artist.
“How do I make my own name and my own style? That was a struggle,” she says, recalling times of wondering “Who am I? I’ve got my mom, so who am I to do art, right?”
But now, Willette says, “Gianna inspires me with her exploration of mediums and techniques and textures. I had a picture in my phone of a painting that she did of a grassy meadow that I kept showing to [my] students as an example of ‘finding your way to a texture.’”
Robinson reminisced recently: “My grandfather would always say, ‘You know, there’s a rule that you’re not supposed to have you a path going off into a corner right off your painting, but rules are meant to be broken.’ He knew all the rules, even though he didn’t go to art school. And he would let me know what they were” by way of “critique, which I loved.”
She recalls a time when her grandparents, both wanting to paint with her, tussled over which paints the youngster needed for her palette.
“You see from their art, they’re totally different,” Robinson says.
Of her parents’ differing styles, Scherer says, “I was always admiring how they didn’t soak up each other’s influence.”
Beyond Fred Scherer’s paintings, his work is still seen in the AMNH dioramas and recognized for its depth and detail. Aikman’s path led her more to the Greenwich Village scene and wide recognition of her own, including several mentions in a show of Morrison’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March.
In anticipation of Saturday’s artist talk, Willette says, “I’ve been thinking about how growing up in an artistic family can be twofold for finding your own way as an artist.”
On the one hand, she says, “you have these wonderful examples of artists working and making, and on the other you’re comparing yourself with adult artists” whose influences are manifest in the Crowell Gallery.
The Robert L. Crowell Gallery at Newfane’s Moore Free Library is located at Moore Free Library, 23 West St., Newfane. Admission to the gallery is free, as is an artists’ talk Saturday, Sept. 19, at 1 p.m. The gallery is open during library hours (Tuesday and Wednesday from 1 to 5 p.m., Thursday from 1 to 6 p.m., Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) For more information, visit moorefreelibrary.org/crowell-gallery.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.