Welcome to Stranger in the Wilderness Gallery
ART everyone can afford! Paintings, Notecards, the GlowBox, Gift Items!
Meet our friendly shop dogs, Gracie and Shadow!
2011 BUSINESS HOURS:
If Winter Weather closes the schools, then the Gallery will be closed.
Mon: Afternoon Appointment Only
Tues: 11am – 4pm
Wed: Morning Appointment Only
Thurs: Morning Appointment Only
Fri: 11am – 4pm
Sat: 11am – 4pm
Sun: CLOSED
Please use the Contact Us form to make an appointment by email.
Commissions welcome at reasonable rates. An original painting is a great way to capture your favorite place, pet, or person in time and beauty. It makes a wonderful gift!
Looking for something different? We offer notecards, books, music and more! Watch as we create more unique items from our paintings and BlockArt Prints for one-of-a-kind gifts. Introducing THE GLOWBOX --- an illuminated light with interchangeable front images etched in gold or silver mirrored plexiglas. Safe and nearly indestructable, this is a beautiful way to light your home at night. It throws no shadows, just glows softly to let you see your way around. Great for children's rooms instead of the common night light. Decorative for holidays and seasonal images all year round. We can even provide the etched front with your favorite photo. Come in to see what it's all about!
About the Artist, Valerie Connelly
Born, raised and a resident of northern Illinois near Chicago for most of her life, Valerie Connelly retired from teaching French Literature in 2005 and now lives in Cookeville, Tennessee. Valerie owns a successful publishing business, is a radio talk show host, and continues to paint, compose music and spend time with family. In the mid-90’s she opened BlockArt Prints, Inc. where she designed custom cards in the medieval tradition of hand-carved images. Clients included the Peace Corps, Lincoln Park Zoo and Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, and many small and medium-sized businesses in the Chicago area. She also patented the Glowbox, a lighted box with interchangeable imagery from the BlockArt Prints collection.
STRANGER IN THE WILDERNESS
In 1999, she returned to painting, and later on while living in Wisconsin, Valerie’s life-long passion for painting led her to become an active Member of the Cedarburg, Wisconsin Artists Guild. In October 2007, she opened a studio in the Studio Artists Gallery and Café, Mequon WI, where for a period of six months, she produced two or more paintings a week. The Studio hosted a show in May 2008, where 54 of Valerie's works were on display for a month. Sales were good, but the flooding of the Milwaukee River in early June of 2008 forced the Studio Artists Gallery to close, and along with it, Valerie’s studio.
Valerie also participated in the Plein Air painting event and sold her painting Ducks Sunning Themselves at Cedar Creek. Then she joined in the nationally known Strawberry Festival, although a storm blew down her tent. Undaunted, Valerie continued to paint, and in October 2008, the Fattail Gallery in Denver CO included 15 of Valerie’s paintings in a show that ran through November that year.
Valerie moved to the warmer climate of the Upper Cumberland Plateau in Cookeville, Tennessee in August 2009, and continues to paint commissions, to paint illustrations for children’s books, and plans a series of paintings of the natural beauty in Tennessee and the Blue Ridge. She has joined the Upper Cumberland Arts Alliance and the ART Prowl.
Artist's Statement
My paintings represent nature’s intimate beauty. I am always aware that I am the stranger, an outside observer capturing the mountain panoramas, oceans, lakes or streams, clouds, landscapes or animals and birds in their native surroundings at one particular moment. Expressing the color, light and personality of the image as I see it is more important to me to bring the emotion of the painting out from the shadows of my imagination than to reproduce an exact reality. I paint to capture that moment of intense observation that caught my interest in the first place.
If I were forced to classify my paintings, I would call them Representational Impressionism. Whatever the image, from wherever it is generated, the observed reality blends in my mind’s eye and flows from the brush without concern for an exact replication of that reality. Yet, a mountain is easily seen as a mountain. The clouds are clearly clouds. Water is fluid or reflecting, and I want the power of the wave or the calm of the still water to reach out to the viewer. But, I do not pretend to paint reality and so, I quietly allow my imagination to bring my paintings into form and substance.