Former Ridgewood Art Institute teacher publishes book
Friday, November 8, 2013
BY EILEEN LA FORGIA
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
Katherine Lewis, a longtime member and former teacher at the Ridgewood Art Institute, has become an author with her recently published book, “Landscape Painting Comes to America: A World Journey from Classic through Plein Air – Apelles through Inness.”
The inspiration for this writing experience began more than 10 years ago when Lewis organized workshops in Constable Country in England for her Ridgewood Art Institute students.
She had visited an area in England known as East Anglia, which lies 60 miles north of London, and consists of four counties: Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. In 1776, the artist John Constable was born in the area and never strayed far from it in his paintings.
Much of East Anglia has been declared by the National Trust as an “area of outstanding natural beauty” and remains much like it was in Constable’s era. Lewis discovered a 15th century farmhouse and studio barn in the village of Dedham that was located on the same path that the English artist took to his school – which still stands today. Lewis was inspired to share her enthusiasm for the painter and the beautiful bucolic landscape with her students.
“I knew that Constable had been responsible for the world of outdoor painting, and I wondered exactly how landscape painting reached the shores of America.”
