One artist, two studios, coast to coast

Does anyone plan a trip to Arizona to paint the scenery and end up with a studio in Alaska?

How about starting out with a name like Sharen Ann Kramer, taking on a married name but keeping the AK as middle initials, only to find out you are moving to Alaska? Her name and her destination are now both AK and that seems to be A-OK with Sharen A K Harris, an East Coast painter, who is also now a Meadow Lakes artist.

Harris has lived in New England all of her life and the Boston accent is enough to convince anyone doubting.

In her art studio in Agawam, Mass., she often paints lily pads and Koi fish from a reflecting pool in her yard. Her studio there awaits her return in October, when she will visit the galleries that represent her and see her artist friends on the eastern shore. But for now, she lives on a lake, near Beverly Lake, in a cabin with a studio, with perhaps some fish, but definitely no Koi to paint.

Two years ago, Harris traveled to France on a painting trip and rented a house with some artist friends, shortly after her husband’s death. Lingering in Europe led her to an art workshop in Portugal for another 10 days before returning to New England. Still feeling the urge to travel, her next painting trip was to Arizona to beautiful Monument Valley, near the Utah border where she had visited 20 years ago with her husband. This time she met a charming photographer from Alaska who invited her up for a visit.

“Once I saw the mountains, it was an endless painting dish,” as in, “such a tremendous inspiration.” The more she visited her photographer friend and her mountains the more she knew she had to have a studio in Alaska, as well as one in Massachusetts. She found an artist family here when doing a demo for the Valley Arts Alliance at the Meta Rose Square Make-a-Scene event in ’08. She says she likes “having the best of both worlds (with a studio on both coasts) and feels very fortunate to have this situation.”

As part of the Valley Second Saturday, she will have her first Alaska solo show titled “Local Color” at Mad Matters on the Old Glenn in Palmer. The opening is Sept. 12, from 6 to 8 p.m., and will reveal how many Alaska mountains have influenced her art, and perhaps we will meet this charming photographer friend. The event is open to the public, with music and refreshments. Harris has done her share of large art, painting murals in museums back east, and is a certified decorative painter with tromp l’oiel skills. Now she says she prefers to work at a manageable size of 24-by-36 inches (quite large to most artists) and paints in oil on canvas using a palette knife, as she continues to be inspired by Alaska scenery. So if the name AK fits, why not paint it?

Suzanne Bach is a Valley artist and teaches at Mat-Su College.