Inspired by the Lyme Art Colony legacy of creating art along this riverfront, renowned sculptor Chad Fisher (officially the Charlotte Colby Danly Sculpture Chair and Director of Sculpture at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts) will work from a pop-up studio on the Marshfield veranda to create the model for a first-edition bronze sculpture. The final bronze cast -- depicting a classic plein air painter at work -- will be ready for delivery to the winning bidder in early 2027.

Fisher has created more than 25 public sculptures, including fine art bronzes for the Chicago Bears Football Club, the Philadelphia 76ers, the NFL Hall of Fame, the Union League of Philadelphia, the Special Forces Charitable Trust, and the Philadelphia Vietnam Memorial.

Fisher studied at Syracuse University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, before receiving his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Chad is a wonderful friend of the Museum who recently helped us create a 20-minute film about the sculpture process for the exhibition Inside Out: Contexts for American Art and served as our 2026 Annual Thorne Lecturer.

Value: Priceless!

In the spirit of the Lyme Art Colony artists, Chester artist Leif Nilsson has created a painting of the Museum's riverfront alla prima (meaning "all at once") to be offered during the Live Auction.

Inspired by the natural beauty of the Lower Connecticut River Valley, contemporary Impressionist Leif Nilsson paints his plein air impressionistic landscapes directly from life. Working in and around his hometown of Chester, Nilsson creates engaging garden, river, coastline, and village paintings. His heavily textured paintings capture the scintillating effects of light in nature over a period of time, and his unique brushwork is a result of his dedication to observing nature.

Leif Nilsson completed a full curriculum of Classical Studies at the Lyme Academy, then enhanced that education with several sojourns to Scandinavia, Asia Minor, and Europe.

A successful working artist for over 30 years, Nilsson shows his paintings in several galleries across the U.S. and at the Leif Nilsson Spring Street Studio & Gallery in Chester.

The winning bidder will also receive a frame to complement the finished painting.

Flying By by Del-Bourree Bach - acrylic; 9 x 17 inches framed; 2026. Contemporary realist Del-Bourree Bach of Mystic, CT is known for his striking, almost tactile, depictions of man and nature. While many of his paintings are inspired by the sea, he also finds subjects in rural farms, western vistas, and city streets, inviting viewers to enter the scene and create their own stories. Primarily a studio painter, Bach works mainly in acrylic and is a master in both the National Oil and Acrylic Painters and the International Society of Acrylic Painters. His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Florence Griswold Museum and the U.S. Coast Guard Art Collection. In 2016 he was awarded Best Acrylic Painting in the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Best of America and achieved Master Status, an honor shared by only a dozen living artists.

Barbara Lussier of East Haddam, CT is a contemporary landscape painter whose work embraces the traditions of the Old Lyme and American Hudson River School painters, honoring nature and working from direct observation. Her landscapes explore the romance of color and light and have been described as poetry. Lussier holds a BFA with high honors from the University of Hartford, where she studied with Rudolph Zallinger and Paul Zimmerman. She has also studied at the Ringling School of Art and Lyme Academy. An elected member of the Copley Society of Art, Lyme Art Association, Rockport Art Association, and Hudson Valley Art Association, her work has received numerous awards and is held in private and corporate collections.

A descendant of Gaugin, Pierre Marie Brisson is a French contemporary artist whose work draws upon centuries of art history, combining ancient motifs, modernist imagery, and contemporary sensibility. Born in Orleans, France in 1955, Brisson studied with French painter Bernard Saby before moving to Paris, where he studied etching at the Pasnic Workshop. His richly layered works incorporate bold patterns and organic forms inspired by nature and the human body, reflecting his fascination with archaeological time and artistic tradition. Brisson's work has been exhibited internationally and is held in such collections as the Cartier Foundation, Jewish Museum of New York, and National Library of France.

Morning on the Lieutenant River by Eileen Eder - oil; 10 x 20 inches, 14.5 x 25.5 inches framed. Eileen Eder is a contemporary realist painter who works almost exclusively from life, capturing the interplay of light, shadow, color, and form in nature and still life. A Connecticut resident, Eder earned an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 1998 and has worked as a professional painter and teacher ever since. After focusing on still life for many years, she developed a passion for plein air painting, studying with influential artists including T. Allen Lawson, Don Demers, and Israel Hershberg. Eder's landscapes and still lifes have been frequent award winners in national and local exhibitions.

Afterglow by Janine Robertson - oil on aluminum; 10 x 18 inches, 14.5 x 22.5 inches framed. Janine Robertson is a prolific, award-winning Connecticut artist who paints luminous landscapes on aluminum and copper. Her paintings are known for their vibrant color, texture, and glow. She began her career as a muralist and trompe l'oeil painter but has since turned her full attention to landscape oil painting. Her work hangs in private collections throughout the United States.

Lester Johnson (1919-2010) was known for creating paintings that seemed to be in motion. As a member of the New York School of painters in the 1950s, Johnson belonged to a group of artists who emerged during the rise of abstraction but formed a niche of their own: expressionist figurative painters. Johnson maintained the human figure as his primary subject, often drawing inspiration for his active compositions from his neighborhood of 1950s Bowery, New York. His work is held in such prestigious collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Bee Bee by Ralf Feyl - oil on linen; 8 x 8 inches, 9.5 x 9.5 inches framed; 2025. Ralf Feyl studied with the respected Bill Parks at the American Academy of Art in Chicago before traveling east to study at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Art. Here he became inspired by the mysterious borderlands of the New England coast and the people who inhabit it. The Cooley Gallery offered Feyl his first exhibition in 1992, and he has shown his work there ever since. Now residing and working in Maine, Feyl has over 20 solo exhibitions to his credit. His work is found in hundreds of private and corporate collections across the globe, including Deutsche Bank, Boeing, Swedish Trade Council, and Pfizer. His work is also featured in the Museum's permanent collection.

Connecticut artist Anna Held Audette discerned loveliness in decay, creating large oil paintings of the disused factories, machines, and scrapyards that are America's ruins. As a painter, printmaker, and educator, her work explored the stark beauty and history of the built environment. Born in New York City, Audette studied at Smith College and the Yale School of Art before teaching art at Southern Connecticut State University. Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, and she was also the author of several books, including The Blank Canvas: Inviting the Muse. A posthumous exhibition celebrating her work -- Abandon in Place: The Worlds of Anna Audette -- was presented by the Florence Griswold Museum in 2023.

Floating Web by Pat Smith - ink, thread, and paper; 25 x 19.5 inches framed. Born in Manchester, England, Pat Smith discovered her passion for art while living in Paris in the 1960s, where she studied at the ateliers of Francine del Pierre and Jean Lugassy. After relocating to New York's Soho in the 1980s, Smith began creating open, woven structures from paper-thin strips of porcelain and experimenting with new materials and techniques, such as watercolor and cyanotype. These explorations expanded her use of line, transparency, and texture. Smith moved to Old Lyme in the late 1990s, where she established a studio while continuing to spend part of each year in Paris.

Connecticut-based artist Anita Soos has explored the rhythms and patterns of the natural world through photography, charcoal drawing, and color oil monotypes for more than forty years. Her Cadence series reflects her fascination with the movement and repetition found in water, rivers, oceans, and trees, as well as the ever-changing effects of light and atmosphere. Working in layers of color, Soos creates expressive compositions that capture the fleeting, never-to-be-repeated moments found in nature. She has exhibited extensively throughout Connecticut, where she lives and works.

Born and raised in northern New Jersey, Crista Pisano began painting in oils in 1989 under the instruction of John Phillip Osborne at the Ridgewood Art Institute. She has her BFA in Painting from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy Graduate School of Figurative Art. Known for her small-scale paintings, Pisano paints landscapes primarily en plein air, working from her studio in Nyack, NY. She has exhibited throughout New England and New York and received numerous awards and honors for her work.

Florence Griswold House - November by Barbara Maiser - oil, 12 x 10 inches framed. Best known for her appealing still lifes and en plein air landscapes in oils and watercolor, Barbara Maiser studied at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. She is also an elected artist of the Salmagundi Club in New York City, the Connecticut Watercolor Society and the Lyme Art Association. Her paintings are in private collections across the U.S. and abroad and are held in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art. She is also the author of Artist's Projects You Can Paint - 10 Watercolor Tablescapes Loose and Light and a contributing artist for How Did You Paint That? 100 Ways to Paint Still Life and Florals, both published by International Artist Publishing.

Danielle Mailer, the daughter of American author Norman Mailer, studied at the New York Studio School and School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout North America and was honored with a retrospective at the Mattituck Museum in 2009. She was also included in the traveling retrospective, The Tides of Provincetown, produced by the New Britain Museum of American Art. Mailer has completed numerous large-scale public art projects, including four permanent works in Connecticut's Northwest Corner and four wall pieces commissioned by Boston Children's Hospital. Her most ambitious project is a 200 x 20 foot mural installation facing the Naugatuck River. Mailer divides her time between creating art and teaching at The Salisbury School in Salisbury, CT. She is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown, MA and maintains a gallery in her hometown of Goshen, CT.

An award-winning artist working in pastel and watercolor, Judy Perry is inspired by the ocean, nature, and the abundant colors found along the shorelines of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod. Her formal training began more than 30 years ago, studying Fine Art and Special Education at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. Upon moving to Old Saybrook in 1996, she began painting professionally. A near fatal head-on automobile collision with a drunk driver left her with an uncertain future in 2009. She began painting ocean and marsh scenes reflecting the beauty of the East Coast shoreline -- which became an act of healing. Her works have won many awards, including the Master Pastelist Award from the International Association of Pastel Societies. Among other associations, she is also a member of the Lyme Art Association, Connecticut Pastel Society, and Pastel Society of America.

Known for her sensuous landscapes and deft brushwork, Katherine Simmons is an accomplished Connecticut artist whose work has been featured in The Pastel Journal, American Artist, and Connecticut Magazine. A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, Simmons continued her studies with master classes in oil painting and pastel. She is an Elected Artist Member of the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society, Connecticut Women Artists, Lyme Art Association, Salmagundi Club, and Oil Painters of America. Simmons has twice received First Place in the Annual Elected Artist Exhibition at the Lyme Art Association.

Oscar F. Bluemner worked as an architect in Germany and the United States before turning to painting full time in 1911. A frequent visitor to Alfred Stieglitz's pioneering 291 gallery in New York, Bluemner became part of its circle of modern artists. His paintings combined prismatic forms with boldly saturated colors, reflecting both his architectural training and his belief in the emotional power of color. Inspired by the idea that color could evoke feelings and moods much as music does, Bluemner developed a distinctive system of color symbolism in his work. Bluemner now is widely acknowledged as a key player in the creation of American artistic Modernism.

A visionary American artist, Charles E. Burchfield was known for his passionate -- often fantastical-- watercolors of nature scenes and townscapes that reflected distinctly American subjects and a profound respect for nature. His paintings are in the collections of many major museums and have been the subject of exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. The largest collection of Burchfield's paintings, archives, and journals are in the collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY, where a Xerox copy of this original doodle is held.

A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, artist Mary Maguire was a former book editor at Knopf and Random House who also maintained a small design business illustrating for Newsweek and Good Housekeeping. She developed special projects for Conde Nast publications and served as features editor of Lauren, a lifestyle magazine produced by designer Ralph Lauren. Her last stint as editorial director of The Muppets for the Jim Henson Company foretold of the many fantastical creatures she would soon paint. She later moved to the Connecticut shoreline and reinvented herself as an antique art dealer. Working from her waterfront studio in Hadlyme, Maguire often pairs her original watercolors and hand-colored antique fine-art prints with one-of-a-kind vintage frames. Works similar to the one up for bid have been featured in Vogue, House Beautiful, and Architectural Digest.

Born and raised in suburban New Jersey, Catherine Christiano took an unconventional path to studio art. Her analytical strengths initially led her to earn degrees in engineering and finance, while working for organizations including GE and Deloitte. Outside of work, she developed her skills in art-making, eventually studying at the National Academy of Design School in New York City and the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, where she earned her BFA in 2001. Catherine had her first solo museum exhibition in 2022 at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London. She has participated in group exhibitions at regional museums, universities, and galleries, including the New Britain Museum of American Art and George Billis Gallery in New York and Los Angeles. In 2023, she received an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.

Lori Neumann studied at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts and works in a variety of mediums including pastels, oil, acrylics, and fiber arts. She is a member of the CT Pastel Society, the Vermont Pastel Society, the Central Massachusetts Pastel Society, as well as the American Impressionist Society. Her work is shown regularly at the Lyme Art Association, the Madison Art Society, The Red House Cultural Arts Center, and other galleries. Her other passion is enjoying the antics of the animals on her Salem, CT farm, which include horses, sheep, angora goats, a pig, a donkey, and a smattering of chickens.

Often described as a contemporary Audubon, artist-naturalist James Prosek has exhibited his work at such prestigious institutions as the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. He has also served as artist-in-residence at the Yale University Art Gallery, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Addison Gallery of American Art. Author of more than a dozen books, Prosek has written for The New York Times and National Geographic, and he received the 2012 Gold Medal for Distinction in Natural History Art from the Academy of Natural Sciences. You may remember Prosek's hand-painted silhouette-style mural of Connecticut flora and fauna featured prominently in the Florence Griswold Museum's 2019 exhibition, Fragile Earth.

A native of Chicago, Helen Cantrell studied painting at the Washington University of Fine Arts in St. Louis, MO. In 1968, she moved to New York City, where she attended the Art Students League. She has lived along the Northeastern coast for the past 40 years, currently in Old Lyme. She discovered printmaking at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT, where she learned about etching, lithography, and woodcuts. She is now an elected member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists, and her works have been displayed in many local solo and group exhibitions. Her work is currently featured in the Florence Griswold Museum's 2026 juried exhibition, Patchwork: Connecticut Artists Consider 250.

Ed Lent is a Connecticut-based artist, poet, and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Madison, CT (2024). Recipient of the Connecticut Arts Hero Award (2020), he is founder of the Ekphrastic Poetry Trust of Connecticut and is recognized for building community through programs, workshops, and exhibitions that unite visual art and writing. His artwork and poetry have been exhibited throughout Connecticut galleries, libraries, and arts organizations. In 2026, Lent's piece Libertas Enlightening the World was selected for the Patchwork exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum, on view through November 2026.

Joyce McAdams has been a working and exhibiting artist for over 35 years whose work intricately combines painting and collage-like imagery. From her jewel-like paintings, she also creates tile murals and installations, fabrics, clothing, scarves, tile murals, and fine giclee prints. A Massachusetts native who studied at Rhode Island School of Design and University of New Hampshire, she has participated in over 60 solo and group exhibits in museums and galleries across the country. She regularly gives workshops and exhibits in fairs and festivals around the South and East Coast. She works out of her home studio in Edgewater, FL.

Skip Hine is an award-winning commercial photographer who spent his career shooting for clients in his NYC studio and around the world. A short list of his notable subjects includes President Gerald Ford, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Arthur Ashe, and Ivan Lendl. Now living full-time in Lyme, Montmartre Paintbrushes was originally published in his book, Memories in Hinesight - My Life With a Camera. He is now devoting his time shooting personal work for his upcoming book, In Hinesight - Eyes Wide Open.

Laurie Gavitt is inspired by the ever-changing textures, colors, patterns, light, and shadows of all things by the sea, working primarily in watercolor and other water media. As well as being a devoted painter, Laurie Gavitt is also an active member of her local artist community. From 1998 to 2004, she taught and mentored members of the Ninigret Art Guild in Charleston, RI, offering weekly painting groups. She has received numerous awards and recognitions and was honored as an Artist in Residence at the Ocean House in Watch Hill, RI, in 2012. Gavitt is currently a working artist member of the Artist Cooperative Gallery in Westerly, RI.

Born in Israel, Jac Lahav grew up in Boston and studied painting at the School of Visual Arts and The Cooper Union and received his MFA from Brooklyn College. Lahav's complex works investigate narratives of trauma, repair, and growth and often seek to examine under-recognized cultural histories. The Florence Griswold Museum hosted a solo exhibition of his cheeky and thought-provoking large-scale portraits of iconic cultural figures in 2019, titled The Great Americans: Portraits of Jac LaHav. Other solo museum shows have included the Richmond Art Museum in Indiana; Longview MFA in Texas; Saginaw Art Museum in Michigan. His work is also held in many public collections, including the Jewish Museum in Milwaukee, Mount Holyoke Art Museum, the FloGris, and more. You can also see his work featured in the Florence Griswold Museum's juried exhibition, Patchwork: Connecticut Artists Consider 250, on view now.

Every serigraph produced by Erick Sahler is an original work of art as each is made by hand, one color at a time, using the age-old process of silkscreen printing. Sahler is a Salisbury, MD native who graduated with a degree in graphic design in the pre-computer era when everything -- illustrations, typography, design -- was created by hand. He is a member of New York's distinguished Society of Illustrators and an American Screen Printing Association-certified graphic artist and screen printer.

Mally DeSomma has been an artist for more than 35 years whose work has been featured in numerous juried exhibitions and received many awards. For over twenty years DeSomma has taught pastels, acrylics, and oils to adults and children at Artsplace, a private art school in Cheshire, CT, and is now one of the anchor teachers there. She has also taught oils and pastels at the University of Connecticut Waterbury campus and privately in her own studio in Waterbury, CT.

Drawing inspiration from her New England upbringing and love of the sea, Tammy Blais creates stylized palette knife paintings designed to bring a sense of "happy" to your walls. Her minimalist approach incorporates a limited palette of hand-mixed oil colors, sometimes with bits of mixed media, accented by strategic pops of complementary color. She exhibits her work at art festivals and galleries throughout the year and is a member of the Artists' Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, Wickford Art Association, Essex Art Association, and Mystic Museum of Art.