Neighbor News
Exeter’s Lucretia Gordon Wins for her Oil “Exeter Sunflower"
Best in Show from over 130 entries at Seacoast Artist Association Holiday Theme Show
Exeter’s Lucretia Gordon has won Best in Show at the Seacoast Artist Association's Holiday Theme Show "Big Gifts Come in Small Packages" for her oil painting "Exeter Sunflowers." Her painting was chosen from over 130 entries, the largest holiday theme show there ever. Lucretia was inspired by the sunflowers blooming by the Exeter Town Hall and took many photographs of them to paint from. “I just like painting sunflowers,” she says. “They are joyful and have so much character!”
Lucretia can trace her painting back to her aunt, a well-known Chicago artist, Zabeth Selover. Her passion is painting outdoors while capturing the beauty of natural landscapes and oceanscapes. She began painting T-shirts in the Virgin Islands 40 years ago. She painted flowers and fish for the tourists. “The cruise ships would come in and the tourists would disembark and buy my shirts so they could take home a little piece of paradise,” she says. It was hot work, standing in the sun selling shirts. A woman who owned a consignment shop encouraged Gordon to sell paintings on canvas in her shop. “I noticed that many painters didn’t have the color of the water just right. I worked at that and when I got it right my work sold like crazy,” Lucretia says. She works in watercolor, oil, acrylics and pastels.
Lucretia moved to New England in the winter of 2003. “I couldn’t take the hurricanes anymore,” she says. She was on a neighboring island when Hurricane Hugo hit St. Croix in 1989. When she moved to New England from St. Croix, Gordon brought with her the love of painting flowers.
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Lucretia is a member of the Seacoast Artist Association in Exeter and the Palleteers in St. Croix, USVI. She paints regularly with the Seacoast Open Studio in Exeter and at the Portsmouth Senior Activity Center.
Join Lucretia and the other SAA artists for a safe Second Sunday reception on November 14th, 2-4. There will also be a holiday Open House on December 12th, from 1-4. More at seacoastartist.org Updates are on their Facebook page.
