VIDEO:Even before walking through the front door of artist Cindy Pease Roe’s Greenport, New York studio, you know you’ve stumbled upon something unique. An eclectic mix of mismatched potted plants, vintage signage, and colorful found-plastic wreaths populate the courtyard. Flip the latch on the oversized window-paned, door and you’re transported into a world chock-a-block with paints, brushes, easels, bins of plastic, books and paintings large and small. And once inside, you’re greeted by the artist’s house mascots—an outsized sea turtle sculpture fondly named “Herman” gliding about the rafters, watches the studio from above; on the ground, “Archie” and “Midnight,” two outgoing boxers, greet visitors with a nuzzle.
All Photos by David Korchin
Cindy Pease Roe takes inspiration from the sea, having spent time along the coast of Massachusetts, with a deep family pedigree of sailing and boat building. Salt and sea air is part of her DNA, and Greenport, with its storied nautical past, was an artistic draw. After spending time in California in a different nautical setting, Cindy returned East to set up paints and easels amongst the wooden ships of one of the town’s oldest working boatyards.
"I gravitate to these old waterfront towns. It's just who I am in this lifetime."
The locale figures prominently in the artist’s work. Amongst her many beautiful landscapes in oil, including one capturing the cloud filled sky one day before hurricane Sandy, is her Boatyard Series. Each work renders the peculiar geometry and shape of the subject matter to which she is so drawn; but beyond the painting lies a mission—to document and bring an artist’s interpretation to a seafaring ambiance that may soon disappear.
"This could disappear. If I don't capture it, it may never be captured."
Among the paints, canvas and artful clutter of her studio are rows of bins and barrels overflowing with colorful plastic of every shape and size found along the region’s beaches. These are neatly organized and labeled, and form the materia prima of Cindy Pease Rowe’s Plastic Series. That project transforms trash into art, and in so doing creates a powerful message on the vast and ongoing environmental impact such materials carry. It’s a lesson she takes to local elementary school classrooms—on one such outing, after discussing the importance of recycling, the students helped collect, sort and build a five-foot fish sculpture that proudly hangs above the doorway in her studio.
A visit to her working gallery in Hanff’s Boatyard reveals Cindy Pease Roe as an artist deeply connected to the earth, wind and sea around her.
Her work can be seen exclusively at her studio located at 190 Sterling Street in the village of Greenport.